At the Museum of Modern Art
after Mark Rothko’s “Rust and Blue”
I watch a woman who smells
of Dior bare her hinged fist at a Rothko:
My grandson could paint better.
As she swings her hips toward Renoir,
I want to catch her handbag’s strap
and say, Look again.
Here, my chest peals with iron bells,
my sternum cracks like skinned lips in winter.
Here, my throat lifts like a dust mote
sleeved in morning light. I am the wide slope
of a meadow dotted with bluebells’ bent heads.
Here, the heels of my bones quake
like the last downstroke of a symphony:
I am horsehair tight in the bow.
I am the lone cello’s lowest note.
