Victorine Meurent, nicknamed La Crevette

modeled for Manet in Olympia and Dejeuner sur l’Herbe

also posing as a matador and with an African Grey Parrot

they were estranged when he rejected the Salon

so she became a painter and modeled for Toulouse-Lautrec

living out her days with Marie Dufour

in the Parisian suburb of Colombes

of her paintings, only Le Jour des Rameaux survives
Do words have enough of the taste

and texture of a low b flat

the sound of green

or the perfume of the back of your neck

to resist the lobotomy of thump

and the onslaught of ideas?
Prisoners in solitary, long distance truckers

sailors in the doldrums, high altitude pilots

and mushers with sled dogs in a flat icescape

see symphony orchestras, UFOs, steam trains

weird sea creatures, and baritones singing Schubert lieder
The ocean’s breasts heave serenely

its hair caresses the rocks

and it rests its forearms on the wharf

saying what a vivid orange voice you have

and isn’t 87 a fat woman

with a man twirling his moustache
Ingres told Degas to make lines, lots of lines

Renoir said he painted with his prick

but if you attach a rubber hand to your arm

and put your real hand under the table

when someone caresses the rubber hand

you can get an erection

because visual beats tactile every time
I see this nothing and it is something

that’s where the trouble comes in

the girl without hands doing arithmetic

with her non-existent fingers

a phantom foot can have a bunion

a phantom wrist a watch
You see the earth give birth to the full moon

like a turtle laying an egg on the sand

but when our night ends

the bay swallows it whole in one gulp

leaving a folly of bubbles

inlaid with lacquer marquetry

with the poet paid to be a naked statue

mute in the corner of the museum of love.