Poems by Suzette Bishop

We Ride toward Chagall’s Dream-Green Translucent Hills

            Based on Marc Chagall’s painting, In the Mountain

     through dropping glass doors

                                                                      opening
without a hinge, swinging out over
                                                            a balcony with no foundation.

The milk cow starting to soar,
                                   toward the color of rocks
                                                                                and haze-tinted sky.

                                   Your crimson skirt
                                                          from the salt breeze
                                                                                                    billow-dotted

until it’s dust
                                                                                 sailing away from rumbling silks, talk–

I hang on to your waist afraid of falling

                                                            And feel nothing, not even a skeleton.

 

The Museum Guard

The sculpture made of hickory nuts displayed on the floor
gets stepped on once a week.
The time it happened while I was guarding,
I placed myself in front of it. A group of school children
ran and danced through the circular gallery.
Even my body couldn’t shield it, couldn’t stop the girl
from running toward the window
                                                            and slamming into the sculpture.
The nuts
                                       ricocheted

 

like

                                                                                                   pool

                                                            balls.

I turn to see a man
unsnarling his raincoat
from a sculpture made of wire mesh.

When I tell the woman sitting on the steel beams,
the one who is resting while her child plays,
that she is sitting on an Art Work,
                                                                        she stares at me.

Sometimes, men will kick the steel beams
to make sure they’re real steel
and durable.

I think the artist who built his piece on the wall
and painted it the same off-white color as the wall,
would like it that people lean against it
while looking out the window.

A man picks up a small Degas ballerina, discovering
she is very light.
I gently ask him to put her back down on the pedestal.

A curator giving a tour gestures toward a painting.
The towering portrait of a Cambodian woman and child
                                                                                    leans over a bamboo pole.
The curator’s arm sweeps against the pole,
and the canvas falls,                            barely missing her.

I am careful
to look at Monet’s Wisteria only long enough
to find out which color is dominating.
But one day, I became a breeze fluttering the brush strokes.