Three from Thrown
Poems by James Wagner
Art by Bracha L. Ettinger
Published 6/12/2014
Poems to paintings by Bracha L. Ettinger
Bracha L. Ettinger, EURYDICE, THE GRACES, MEDUSA. 50 × 43.5 cm, oil on canvas, 2006–2012. © Courtesy of Bracha L. Ettinger Studio
XXI
I know the skeleton’s asleep.
A fox faces us as a man
on the right, or the rose
lifted for the two to
dream back again
to trembling. The water
is all fear of fear,
dribbling shy of
the white knives
above the plum
accoutrements. If one
came in without a face,
witnessed this
diluted abuse,
we would turn and spurn
the girl in the wall.
Bracha L. Ettinger, EURYDICE, THE GRACES, DEMETER. 50 × 41 cm, oil on canvas, 2006–2012. © Courtesy of Bracha L. Ettinger Studio
XXVII
Direct these lungs, bungler,
the way they say the mountains call
us to fall down her frown.
Bony knees appealingly lead
to mischief, a quiet, or
a dire lady squinting for love.
I arrived by neither window,
avoiding the therapy the Chinese
advocated. I felt something
sicken. A desert resolved
around us. They lit the purple
balloons in a winter no one
saw so far, or still sees.
Pleasant fecklessness,
some dark tune about New
Orleans. It was in the ribs,
that unclottable longing,
so there was nothing
one could say anymore
to a face.
Bracha L. Ettinger, EURYDICE, THE GRACES, PERSEPHONE. 50 × 43.5 cm, oil on canvas, 2006–2012. © Courtesy of Bracha L. Ettinger Studio
XXXIII
The homeless on bicycles, following their feelings,
to the river bottoms where their
camps answer these saintly flags.
To the screaming in the trees, to the violet
harbor.
An oblong fascination with your twinship,
as if beyond the staring there was a fertile
misunderstanding. One to water.
I can’t salt your hate here.
I tire of it all. The little leopard circles
argue against any atlas, lights on and off.
Remembering Acadia and Ativan,
imposters in folding chairs, dipping
their chins in what was a mysterious sun.
Photo by Harold Abramowitz
James Wagner is the author of Thrown (There Press, order here), Work Book (Nothing Moments), Trilce (Calamari Press), the false sun recordings (3rd bed), and several chapbooks, including Geisttraum—Tales from the Germans and The Idiocy: Plays. His poetry, fiction, and reviews have appeared in The American Poetry Review, The Baffler,Boston Review, Fence, 6x6, Zoland Poetry and elsewhere. He lives in California.
(Updated Jun. 2014)
Photo by Ania Krupiakov
Bracha L. Ettinger is a visual artist, philosopher, and theoretician of French feminist psychoanalysis. Recent solo exhibitions at: the Historical Museum of St. Petersburg, Peter and Paul Fortress (2013); Museum of Fine Arts (Beaux-arts), Angers (2011); Tapies Foundation, Barcelona (2011), Freud Museum, London (2009). Recent group exhibitions at: Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw (2013-2014); Pompidou Centre, Paris (2010-2011). She is the author of Matrix. Halal(a) - Lapsus, MOMA oxford (1993) and The Matrixial Borderspace, University of Minnesota Press (2006).
(Updated Jun. 2014)
