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A Murder in Barcelona
1. crime & portraiture
In Barcelona, I met a woman
who had murdered her husband.
He had been having an affair
with her best friend. She prepared
his favorite dish, a bouillabaisse,
then stabbed him with the knife
she would later use to cut cauliflower.
That night I saw my husband hanging
on the wall. He was gazing down
at me with his slant-eyed smile
from a 7-foot square acrylic.
The Monkey of the Inkpot, scarlet
and black, was sitting beside him.
The painting depicted the fall of the Third
Reich. Three iron crosses lay at his feet.
Across his upper lip fell the shadow
of a mustache. I do not like mustaches.
2. breakfast with Tom Eliot
I am walking in the early-morning mist.
It folds over me like gauze. Shroud
of maladies. Sweet aroma of baked bread.
Someone sitting in a slant of light eats
orange marmalade at the coffee shop.
I order one-eyed eggs, yellow split-pea soup,
sliced peaches. Do I dare to eat a peach?
In my classes, I teach the work and life
of T. S. Eliot. No, he was not an anti-Semite, only
a man of his time. My husband does not
accept him. He can deal with his Mumbojumbo
caterwauling his RumTumTuggers and Jellicles,
his Macavity Macavity there’s no one like
Macavity but once he gets past Growltiger
and Jennyandots and into Bleistein with a Cigar,
the Jew underneath the lot, not cat-fur
but money-in-fur he loses patience with the poet
of my class, thinks him an ass and does not give
a shit about the hollow men, the stuffed men,
the arms that are braceleted and bare
the music from a further room
the mermaids singing . . .
3. the last supper
Seated at our table:
the Foot Fetishist
the Love Mechanic
the Manhattan Masturbator
the Cyberspace Felon
the Girl in a Condom Coil
the Porn Flickmeister
the Self-Mutilator
the Man who Mistook his Daughter
for his Wife
Dialogue:
Did you love him?
Yes.
Do you remember the knife?
What knife?
4. chorus
(proverbs 1)
If you can find a truly good wife, she is worth
more
than precious gems. Her husband can trust her,
and she will richly satisfy his needs. She will not
hinder him but help him all her life. She finds wool
and flax and busily spins. She buys imported foods,
brought by ship from distant ports. She gets up before dawn
to prepare breakfast for her household, and plans the day’s
work for her servant girls. She goes out to inspect a field
and buys it; with her own hands she plants a vineyard.
She is energetic, a hard worker, and watches for bargains.
5. sex, lies, and video excerpts
Frame I: I stalk my husband’s lover until
we come face to face in the
Egyptian wing of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. History surrounds
us.
The past is prologue. Before my eyes, she morphs into a mummy.
My
husband appears. He performs unspeakable acts upon her as if
I were not
there, then turns to me and says, smiling. G E T A L I F E.
Frame II: I am lost in midtown. Suddenly the lights go out.
I run through
the streets searching for a lightswitch. A drag queen dressed
in the season’s
new Pollock-drip lavender hands me a switch with cut-off wires.
The
party’s over, she says, in a voice that sounds curiously
like my own.
Frame III: I am skiing. I have never skied before but I am not
afraid. My
husband is with me. Together we slalom to the edge. We make
love.
Suddenly I remember I must send an e-mail. I turn to him, you
must go
now. He disappears, swept away by a thundering avalanche I have
just
e-mailed into existence. A black veil lands on my head, along
with some
bird droppings.
I sit alone in the snow, typing briskly: Ou sont les neiges
d’antan . . .
6. Shirley Temple
Shirley Temple Beth David is reading the Tarot.
As she speaks, dancing shadows enchant the room.
Geese fly from her hands. Plump and merry.
Her laughter is deep, cunning. A body lies
on the floor surrounded by kitchen knives,
gingerbread crosses, and magician’s mustache.
Should I go to the police? “No,” she says,
“Go to the Vengeance, go to the Pity, go to the Pig’s
Head.
Eat the testicles in the barrel. Wear widow’s weeds,
Smell of Patou, dance with the heroines of ages,
Bake fish in a clay pot. Sing hymns. Break bread
with Jesus. Go drunk to our Lady and watch and wait.
The mysteries of shrimp steamed in beer will be revealed.
There is prophecy in Pompano, serenade in the Striped
bass. Munch. Masticate. Let the feast begin!”
At that moment, I smell overcooked broccoli.
I hear a piano. The sounds of Satie. A dog
barking. A key turns. Suddenly a toothpick
pierces my heart. At the other end,
a small frankfurter. Sauerkraut. Heavy
mustard. A small boy enters.
He has the face of my husband.
He is eating. Pigs in a blanket.
He is my beautiful husband,
happy at last.
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