Francis Bacon Triptych, May-June 1973, and: Neighbor, and: Speaking to the Dead, and: Canisteo Invocation, and: The Behavior of Mirrors in the Summer Gardens

Oil on Canvas, 198 x 147 cm

FRANCIS BACON TRIPTYCH, MAY-JUNE 1973

And it would have seemed white arrows werepointing me toward roomswith you in them. Where the spent bulb of filamentburst. The yellow light fractures your puddled face.

Here: life imitates nothingbut life. The arch of your spine tilt on gesso,canvas, paint—the white ladder of the bodydescending the body. Outside, the unstinted sun blows

through the cypresses. Milkweed. A possum in a fieldhollowed by flies. I hold my hand to the canvas.Your head falls through a hole in the floor.Inside of me there is a red hallway. Three rooms.

And every one with you inside.

NEIGHBOR

I have seen you bend the pear branch for clipping,your wife press eggshellinto the rose bed, and have been enviousof the white grid of lattice that stands against

your porch steps, how the golden arch of pollenfalls through the cedarsand clings to your windows.For you have shown me the lacquered deck,

pressure-treated lumber, the shellac, and tinceiling, how the PVC skeleton of plumbing sleepsbelow the lawn, and I'd like to be like you,but this suburb has found me jobless

again, pacing inside a sprinkler systemwith my head to clear, when I cannotso much as clear freezer burn off asparagus,or cover cabbages in tattered blankets without feeling

weepy. I'm trying to be the clean, corporate type,with an IPA sweating in my palmat a brewery I love. I'm trying to understand the turnof a razor along the stubble of my jawline—

for there is tenderness, I've found, in the dead ratin the dustbin. The nest of bees still wetwith poison. Neighbor, I am full of doubt:will the cat ever cease to stare long enough

at the sparrows to chase the fly crawling toward the sunon the glass? How will the koi pond learnto cover its face in iceif the ground I've built around it is salt?

I have spent the night walking the neighborhoodfeeling absurd,picturing my face on a white catand then an owl with its head turned backwards

in the sun. I have become what I must detest:the oak leaves choking on the pool filter,the lawn mower turned to smoke in the yard—the hard yellow bill of the robin knocking inside the engine.

SPEAKING TO THE DEAD

          What did you see?

Cumulustouching the silver head of moonon the long aisles of corn

          What else?

My name pissed into snowbanks

My mother cutting my hair in the lawnThe curls pull like odd leaves across snow

          Is it pleasant to think of?

Floatingthe iced branches in morningamongst it as it is pleasantto think of animals swimmingthe bottom of a pond

          How did you—

I staked a chair into the frozen fieldand poured a bucket ofwater over my headand sank back into the earth

          What do you see now?

My skullchewing on a fingernailof moon—swaying inthe glassed eyeof the iced field where the deadleaves rustle I think as wings

Fishermen who pull bodiesfrom the pond and carrylike silver lanternsthe bodies from the banks

          What do you read?

Books

          What do you read?

"Take off the red helmetof your head, the blackwings that have shadowed me"

          What are you now?

Strippednaked, a crushed cigaretteburning a holein my father's shirt

          What are you on?

A doormata fly's wing

          What did you want to be?

A rusted tiller, dissolvingin a field, an upright pianofull of rainwater

          And what are you now?

Dipped in tar, so stillthe cricket lands, and neverleaves my palms

CANISTEO INVOCATION

From hydro-fracked waters and...