On Seeing Blake's Illustrations

We first met on the broken couches
of college. Next to Picasso's
blue nude he asked,
When the Sun rises
do you not see a round Disk of fire?
And he answered himself, O no no

I see the Heavenly host crying Holy Holy Holy.
I question not my Corporeal Eye
any more than I would Question a Window
I look through it & not with it.
I have looked through the window
then stripped my clothes and danced

in the garden. I was fourteen and ready
for the rain. My wet flesh
under the florescent lights of New Jersey
trying for ecstasy. Here at the Met,
Blake's craft behind glass, I am arrested
by color--yellow, red. I am trying

to conceive, have failed. The tyger
I dreaded as if I were the lamb
gazes out with a lopsided grin.
I cannot know I will bear a live child,
that she will be whole, stroke my breast,
that her heat will flood my body.


Deborah Bacharach
The Southampton Review
Spring 2013



At Four Months I Visit Chicago

1. The art museum

Renoir's laundress, puts
her basket down, hands on her hips,
a slightly rounded belly.
Maybe she has a secret,
(I have a secret! I have a secret!)
maybe she knows what I know.

2. The hip disco

Bathed in pink neon and the futile
gyrations of the children, yes they are just
children, and they don't make eyes
at the likes of me, never mind
my spandex. I drink tonic,
bargain with smoke.

3. The natural history museum

I have waited in line for an hour.
The history of chocolate is the history of slaves.
Children crowd in front.
I step around their screams and vomit.
In the jade room, intricate, quiet,
a baby doll in white flannel lies crumpled
beside the glass case.


4. In line at the windowless McDonald's

Cattle car railings, no natural light,
the desperate hope that they will still have
fish filet like I used to get on Sundays
like I used to get at the Philly Street Station
like I used to get driving Minneapolis to Seattle
listening to Sherlock Holmes
and Lolita, I find a place.

5. Walking Wabash

Brancusi's Sleeping Muse has
no body, closed stylized eyes.
I have a complete body, every finger, every limb.
I move like a gracious mountain.
I could. I will be a lahar, carving the plain.
My eyes are open even in the wind.

Deborah Bacharach
The Southampton Review
Spring 2013