INDECENCY

 

          
       But how out of character for Mona too, to follow
       Stew to Loffdoff:  that might have involved her shedding her rôle
       As an ambitious and respectable career-woman.
       Hadn’t that been her one ambition – to have a career,
       In anything?

                         Advertising just happened to be her
       New country’s promise of promises, of getting away
       From the boring loud repression of her birth-family:
       Her Italian-Argentinan mother, Lebanese-
       Japanese-Brazilian father, two older sisters and
       A younger brother whom she had failed to teach the tango.

                                                                 *

          Gauging, through Halabi’s jokes, that Radica had remained 
       In town after Stew winged off to his Colorado rock
      (In whose contemplation-shadow i believe he still breathes),
       But that he, Halabi, didn’t know her (latest) address
      (Though he believed she had become ‘involve with some other
       Crazy artist’) – i returned the next day (which was to be
       My last in that sad but ‘thriving’ little-kitty city)
       To the art-show at the museum-gallery, hoping
       To run into Radica there;   perhaps she was now linked
       To the artist whose works were on display.

          There were only two or three viewers in the gallery
       At 1-ish in the afternoon (of a routine workday,
       After all, having to work’s the best alibi for not
       Attending to anything but your corner of the Club
       Of hallowed Hard Work;   hardworking artists, beware:  unwork!)

         (from “fatima solagua arterra’s nudes” by Brian Chan)