Van Gogh’s “Self Portrait” at The Orsay
http://www.maverickmagazine.com/articles/428/1/Van-Goghs-Self-Portrait-at-The-Orsay-/Page1.html
Kevin Dobbs
Kevin Dobbs returned to the USA
recently after 18 years in Asia. He’s Dean of Language Arts and Fine
Arts at Yuba College in Northern California and has placed poems,
fiction, and essays in many journals and anthologies including Chelsea,
Raritan: a Quarterly Review, The New York Quarterly, Carolina
Quarterly, Florida Review, Sou’wester, Soundings East, Poet Lore,
Mid-American Review, Beloit Fiction Journal, Karamu, Gulf Stream, Writer’s Forum, and New Delta Review. By Kevin Dobbs
Published on 09/19/2009
My face is made of Night Crawlers
Gleaming fat and febrile
From the Iris garden
And through hot vats of dye: the world’s
Gleaming fat and febrile
From the Iris garden
And through hot vats of dye: the world’s
My face is made of Night Crawlers
Gleaming fat and febrile
From the Iris garden
And through hot vats of dye: the world’s
Detached fingers, middle fingers—
Push them
Up your nose, into your ears, and
All the way through your body,
In and out, until they wrap all the way
Around your necks. It doesn’t matter if
The Dutch gave middle fingers.
I say they gave fingers. I still
Mix peat, clay, and bedrock, with my
Fingers, stretching, buckling
To a pulp an Earth as teched
As the Church: all the fingers
In the world are resurrected,
Triggered
But alive. Look longer:
My face detaches, then
Farther and farther out until it hovers,
A scarecrow, in the middle
Of the room, the face,
The fingers,
All the fingers in the world,
Turning, turning. It’s me.
It’s me
With voices—the clergy wiling: dig thee
A well deep into your garden then
Pack the dirt back and dig it
Up again and again until
The sick perfume of Irises fans hot
Gallery walls. You are sick of
My swirls, sick enough to
Faint into my grave.
Listen,
You can hear the voices, too.
You can hear the fingers
All the fingers in the world: the slosh,
The slither, the ripened
Snapping of knuckles. You can see
And hear me give the finger—which
One doesn’t matter.
Copyright © Kevin Dobbs, 2009. All Rights Reserved.
Gleaming fat and febrile
From the Iris garden
And through hot vats of dye: the world’s
Detached fingers, middle fingers—
Push them
Up your nose, into your ears, and
All the way through your body,
In and out, until they wrap all the way
Around your necks. It doesn’t matter if
The Dutch gave middle fingers.
I say they gave fingers. I still
Mix peat, clay, and bedrock, with my
Fingers, stretching, buckling
To a pulp an Earth as teched
As the Church: all the fingers
In the world are resurrected,
Triggered
But alive. Look longer:
My face detaches, then
Farther and farther out until it hovers,
A scarecrow, in the middle
Of the room, the face,
The fingers,
All the fingers in the world,
Turning, turning. It’s me.
It’s me
With voices—the clergy wiling: dig thee
A well deep into your garden then
Pack the dirt back and dig it
Up again and again until
The sick perfume of Irises fans hot
Gallery walls. You are sick of
My swirls, sick enough to
Faint into my grave.
Listen,
You can hear the voices, too.
You can hear the fingers
All the fingers in the world: the slosh,
The slither, the ripened
Snapping of knuckles. You can see
And hear me give the finger—which
One doesn’t matter.
Copyright © Kevin Dobbs, 2009. All Rights Reserved.