starting with one
who knew me from the reception
after the marriage of heaven and hell
where Molly Bloom (1)
who had once sought out Tristram Shandy (2)
had nearly been lost
in a river at the heart of darkness
knew a set builder (3) on the River Kwai
who had set the angle of incidence
from which I plotted an escape
into the Hermitage
& met a future wife's future husband (4)
who knew the shortest route,
at least in favorable winds,
to Molly's dismissive soliloquy,
"You too, inseminator?"
despite an articulate showing
in her holdings
(crisp, voluptuous if well-traveled)
where she spoke of ever more
gifted visitors whose work --
as in that rescued from a burlap bag
left in Sedona by Max Ernst --
hung auspiciously in the Hermitage
in whose sorry wake
I had lately arrived
to learn that the bedroom was also a set
routine-battered & damp
& that the future ex-husband
noted linguist would become
a collaborator's collaborator
of whom the artist-turned-poet (6)
to stare at an empty chair
which might once have figured
in surrealist portmanteau
now saw self-portrait
Man (not) in Empty Chair
vacated for spirit-possession
in six alternate afterlives
October 2011