Layla in Cincinnati

 

Pentecost 80 x 100 x 4.5 mixed media on canvas by Karin Goeppert

CINCINNATI SPLEEN

So what do you, like, want from life? This from

a gum-chewing girl, eyes switching off just as I

register her pointless question—

life doesn’t take requests—

still I wouldn’t mind languishing awhile

beneath the weight of a half dozen essential questions, preferably

in a garden, Calabria or California, either would do, olive grove out back

thunderstorms in late summer, in the evening

so that it’s cool enough to sleep

ants everywhere in the aftermath of rain

like all over that severed hand in “Andalusian Dog” and

a young woman attempting to console the poor thing

although, in hindsight, maybe there weren’t any ants—

I’m always in search of

a perfect image which I can then haul around

for ever like an ill-advised tattoo, a motto, I try

to explain all of this to a girl whose name—

she chews gum like she really means it—

whose name, whatever her name

is and who wishes, just like me, that she was anywhere but here.