Perhaps you’ve heard the story
before. Yves says
he’s not fond of canned soup
prefers bistro to beast, sips red
wine at room temperature, thinks
car crashes are best
avoided, stages words that worm
past Andy’s rose-coloured glasses
until he snaps like a blue roller-blind
in a square window—
casts a can from his intricately
inched demonstration,
flattens the cigarette, strategically
sloped for an entire year,
from Yves lip. And once
the pissing match starts,
without wind’s wetting help,
they two-step closer to an artist’s
angry duel: rock, paper, scissors.
The parable being
not how fair you fight
but never leaning in to the hot air
of heart-heavy hands
when they both pick scissors.
4 comments:
I'm loving the idea of this suite - obsession with dead artists!
And in this one, the specific details and preferences are terrific.
Two phrases that don't ring as solidly as the rest for me: "casts a can" and "leaning in to the hot air"
This poem is so rich with lovely detail while being trim in the sense that nothing seems extraneous.
I love the image of the game, the "cigarette, strategically/sloped for an entire year".
Nice line breaks too -- esp. "crashes are best/avoided"
(uh, some of my comment didn't make sense, hence deletion. here is a clearer version):
I love how this feud feels, like, mythological. I don't know, or need to know, if Andy Warhol ever really whipped a soup can at Yves Klein, but I wish it were so, and that's why this poem is so awesome.
At first I wasn't sure who the "he" of the 5th couplet was and so the action of the next bits were a little muddy. Only at first. Everything else is so damn crisp, though... this is perhaps why I snagged on it. This is really a criticism better aimed at prose, so please disregard.
I was also wondering if the "you" near the end... is that an actual third party (as in "don't get too close to a bitchy artist catfight" or is the you a more nebulous entity and the "they" refers to the hands, not the artists? I am being microscopic.
The poem's beautiful.
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