Vol 3 No 1 2009
Intimate Physics, Infinite Hand
Gathered in the daybreak room
beside my easel, Ruth,
her constant scarf wrapped blue
down over her temples, Rosendo
brawny, one by one
holding up the bright-hued
pictures. Talking here all
three of us, Ruth now
without cigarettes, about perception
as a dream, how colors
transform fields of vision,
and the think tanks
that he works for. A thing is not
an entity, just two or three
dimensions, not temporal at all;
but seen as we define it, or
explore it as an opening—A thing
will blossom says Rosendo
beaming as he shifts each painted
monotype to catch the filtered light
that softly pours its Mexico
from the outer window, over
pink geranium, bougainvillea,
buildings steeped with vines and
brilliant lemon, avocado buses
spouting plumes of diesel. A distant
campesino cuts brush with a machete:
sharp, swift, deft, exact—the way
a surgeon Ruth's known well
clears cancer with his art.
On a naked rooftop, two lovers
practice theirs: Body, body—a
yearning thing within itself, deep
as it can saturate, vast as it can
wash you—the sky, its palm
fronds, blush hydrangea
climbing into mist. Ruth
tightens her scarf, talks of her new
sculpture. She makes it, she says
to explain. Rosendo, I, our spread-
arm urgent fingers, point the world,
reshaping, possible—the one
we now are entering. Ruth
grins, pushes up her breasts, like
sun-drenched tangerines. And
cups them, to her men. As if
they were there.
Jamie Ross