WEBVTT

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Collective Invention.

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This is the first
painting that I ever had.

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Well, I had a very, very
incredible experience

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with this painting.

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I looked at it years
before I wrote this poem,

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and it was during a time
when I was very inarticulate.

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And you get into those
places where they're usually

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dark places where
you're trying to deal

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with stuff in your
life that's difficult

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and it's just very, very
hard to write about.

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But, the paint--
this painting seemed

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to speak very,
very deeply to me.

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And I somehow went
inside that painting,

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and I don't know how
long I was there.

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But, when I came out, I had
been there and I wrote this--

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I guess, I wrote this
poem about three years

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after that Collective Invention.

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The picture in this case
is a picture very simple

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of an opposite of a
mermaid, a female--

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let's see, how does it go?

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Yeah, a fish top and a female
lower torso lying on the sand

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with waves coming
up, just very simple.

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The marigolds of
blue vinyl suitcase

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have crud all over the stove.

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He left shiniest
to bring light to.

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Yes, a shelf and reach where
the little both of them

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could begin, could
make his clean start

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as fresh as watermelon slice.

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Oh, where was her life?

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In him, his tiny mysteries,
her laughing sound,

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a light in his throat.

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Oh, what was a mother
to do being her

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and suddenly it's now?

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When she went away, there was
this big boy who pushed him.

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When she went away, they
pushed him in the puddle.

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He was running home.

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He was running home.

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And she wasn't there.

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But trying somewhere else to
find out who and where was she.

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Was she not the neat and tidy?

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Did she not see her
seducers in a line

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and shaking their fingers and
showing, be here, be here.

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In her mind, was it she lay
at the edge of the waters?

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At the edge of the waters?

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Was it sand there?

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Was her fish skin bare?

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All she knows is it scratches.

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And when the waves
collapse in inches,

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she cannot swim for her
Phinney body's half human.

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One day, she's
plunk on the shore

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and her image comes
to her in a picture

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as though, holding a
mirror of blue paint,

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just a whiff of Verizon
and the little waves

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creeping and folding.

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And there it is, no way
of turning her back now.

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Her thighs, knees, soft
as whirring of crotch hair

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and all the color of
how she ought to be.

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But suddenly, those
fins and the beginning

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of silver slippery fish
lady lying, no arms,

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no woman swimming.

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But a face cut deep with gills,
and the sad eyes panting.

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And the absolute quiet of
something about to arrive.

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