I. Jasper Johns

In the section on loss and mortality,

the curator never mentions AIDS.

Only suspended cutlery and the gravity

of gray. A hinge removed from its door.

My quietness has no man in it. He is not

transparent, does not carry me quietly

through the streets. I am only ever alone.

There is a picture of Merce. There are

Ted’s sonnets. All of this for one another.

A party the art critics crashed. But I cannot

make a poem bitten by a man. I cannot

name death or its haphazard tongue.

II. Edward Hopper

The galleries begin to close

but I must say hello to Soir Bleu

and its sad clown. Hopper’s confusion

was place: an unreal landscape but still

something like a mountain remains

to dramatic effect. A waitress, tall

and domineering, his aging wife

with supernatural breasts, 7th avenue

without a soul in sight. He must have read

Hardwick and taken to heart whatever

she said about fact, fiction, and memory.

That fact gets in the way of memory, I think it was.