GIRL IN BLUE

What are you looking at now. Schiele, I say. Hip bones. Eye

sockets. Scribbled vulvas. Yuck, you say. No, it’s beautiful.

Breasts? you ask, hopefully. Schiele didn’t like breasts,

I reply, walking past the miserable haystacks, Monet’s

sexless ponds. People stare. You’re not supposed to be on

your phone in the museum. I eat a bowl of soup; you just

listen. What kind. Tomato. I spill some change on the patio.

Clumsy, you say, and I get hot in the face. Dusk. I stretch my

legs by the fountain, dip my sandals in, push the quarters

along the tile. Couples and their cutlery all around me. You

should have children. What? You don’t explain. The phone

is going to go dead. I hold it tighter. This is costing you, I

say. Yes. A fortune. I’m going to Rome. We both think of it:

meeting there. The thought flexes its muscles, invincible for

a moment, then wastes, hobbling off through the minutes.

Have a wonderful time, you say. I will. We let the phone die. I

keep it pressed to my ear. The water circling my calves. The

fountain isn’t for wading, someone tells me, and this seems

a great injustice, more than I can bear, to move from it. I

step out, my feet sliding in the wet leather. I make marks on

the marble all the way through the café to the last Schiele,

one I didn’t describe to you, an old favorite: a little girl

holding closed the back of a blue dress. Her face in her arm.

A child. He went to prison for a while. Then he drew this.

She’s in a different kind of prison. A security guard says,

Ma’am, we’re closing. You’d say, Just a minute. She’s still

looking. But I didn’t want you to see her. To see me seeing

her. Ma’am. I close my eyes. Feel him at my back. I don’t want

him to see my face. If he goes I’ll go. But he doesn’t. I have to

turn toward him. I keep my eyes closed, walk past, I feel his

surprise, how he steps sideways to let me pass. I know this

place like the back of my hand. Just follow the crumbs home.

RENAISSANCE

In the dream I look at so many paintings I have to lie across

the bed afterward, my eyes pulling out of their sockets, a

cold cloth on my forehead. Fresco painting fresco statuary

painting painting church painting. The men are relentless.

I go to Calabria, to the silver firs, and it’s like being pierced

all over with little swords, I can’t take a deep breath. Oh

my god, I say, oh my god oh my god, my fingers sliding over