GHOSTS
GHOSTS IN YOUR GARDEN
They say the ghost of Claude Monet haunted Joan Mitchell’s
Paris garden Her paintings abstractions of Giverny Watery
purples + glistening pinks Lover of Jean-Paul Riopelle Hard
colours +squares And penile They say in the notes to the show
(AGO to May 6) that they met in Paris fell in love + enjoyed a
wild social life The subtext: wilder than yours
My own gardens have been haunted mainly by Jewish poets Your
ghosts find you Monet far too angelic +peaceful for an angsty red
headed Jew with an un-wild social life for at least a decade Oh and 1
Jewish photographer a suicide Daughter of ritzy clothiers Arbus
Angsty as they come Then there is Mandelstam persecuted + gulaged
On Tuesday as I departed a Jewish retirement residence a woman touched
my hand: Mumala do you speak Yiddish? I understood: Peace God + Luck
But it was when she switched to English that a punch administered to gut I
last saw my mother at 15 There was a knock at the door I knew what was
coming Your interlopers find you: survivors kidnapped +burned children
In the camp there was something someone always pushing at my back Do
you know who? I thought of everything in life I was a business woman But
I never thought of this She gestured around the lobby I stumbled out into the
frigid night Leftover cheesecake bouncing against arthritic knee Would I trade
my aging psyche for a younger body? MRI’s now writ large in my wild social life
While I would have said no a mere week ago the drill in my rotator cuff is creating
nostalgia for my un-formed 20’s The unlimited possibilities +the ghost of Lennon
finding me Years before survivors of wars + tortured children Light of heart Angst
free (mostly) Once a wise + jovial aunt who spent many years incapacitated said:
We live our lives backward This at a wine+cheese on the eve of my 1st engagement
__
Life strikes a deal with the coming night….
2 Joan Mitchells
Spring 2018 ..
songanddancegirl 