the model. My husband sees the notebook on the table, flips

to your page, stops. I go quietly cold.

EXHIBITION

EXHIBITION

Exhibit A.

I was hanging a plant in my office when my husband came in

with salads. Surprise surprise, he said, and put the salads

down, put his hands on my hips. I said Oh no I’m working.

He said, Lunch break. I put my hands on my desk and stared

at the chair where students sit when they want to cry or yell

at me. Sometimes when someone is crying or yelling in that

chair I think about coming with my hand in a bed of spinach.

Exhibit B.

I showed up to my first class in a pink silk skirt. I taught

sitting down. When I stood, there were marks on the back

of the skirt, where my crotch had touched the fabric. I’d just

worn a thong and this is what I learned: No thongs. No silk.

No skirts.

Exhibit C.

It’s a story from the Bible.

Exhibit D.

A male colleague sat next to me at a meeting and

complimented my work, which he said he’d seen in a show

downtown two years ago. So striking! I’m married, I said

right away, fingers curled over the edges of my notebook,

my wedding ring white beneath the fluorescent lights.

He laughed. Yes, he said, I see.

Exhibit E.

I spent my first paycheck on cocaine. I did all of it, stayed

up for twenty-six hours drawing piles of tentacles, which

I thought were brilliant and which are still actually quite

good.

Exhibit F.

F is for You Fucked Up.

Exhibit G.

I never get this far when hanging a show. I start putting the

work up randomly or else someone’s curating anyway and I

leave it to them. You’re supposed to put everything in some

kind of order. The men are very good at it. They take a long

time, saying Hm, no, not there, no, it doesn’t cohere, no,

don’t do it that way. In class I say it’s so important, how you

present yourself. I pretend it’s all on purpose. The run in

the stocking. The back of my head where I didn’t quite

comb my hair.

DOUBLE

DOUBLE

In class there’s a girl who never takes

her big coat off.

She scratches at the paper with her pencil,

her marks so light

I have to squint to see them. She’s drawn the model

as a bird. What are you doing here? I ask,

pointing at a wing. She shrugs. I’ve never heard

her speak. Her dark hair disappears into the neck

of her jacket and I almost touch it, how wild it is,

how it floats around her pale face

hiding her yellow eyes. We look at the model

together, the way his balls

hang between his legs. We look back at the board.