Performance Artist

She gathered up what rags were left,

what discards she imagined

she could fool us into thinking she had

searched the world to find –

those correlative objectives

(she liked inverting Eliot’s phrase)

that might suggest some ways in which

her mind was odd and wonderful.

Is this performance art? What isn’t?

She knew her tattered scraps

were woebegone, their colors either

garish or too dirty to be anything but grey,

their conditions so beyond resuscitation

she would have to put them on

in such bewildering profusion

that our blank confusion at the mix

would keep us just sufficiently at bay

to think that maybe what she wore

she had intended to convey

the existential meanings of the trash,

the vast morass of life. After all, the point

of art was posing through that strife.

Supposing, if against the odds, that she

could sway us to believing that her

mission served her gods – that we owed

her, anyway, at least a nod of serious

attention and respect, perhaps she could

succeed in her desired effect.

After all, the point of art was pose,

to put on shows with tatters, untied bows

and unexpected glows. And there

were glows. We hadn’t banked on those.

.