Code Name: Mary

The lace top looked like a cross
between the high-collared dress
worn by a manikin in Amherst, Mass,
and the translucent sheen

that varnished the cover
of Valley of the Dolls, a ’60s novel
later made into a miniseries.
I never watched it,

nor did I read the book, but many
of those alive back then would have
at least heard of it. I was alive then
and am now, like the moon,

that eternal pearl that stays
as it is and has so much to say
about fashion and such—the way
what was once in vogue

tends to return: neofascism,
and demagoguery, for example, both
of which love to dress up in religion.

Photograph of Muriel Gardiner (Trude Fleischmann, 1934)

Mary Holding an Open Watch

Time’s a unit of measurement on the sleek
horizon that barks back to mark an ever-
spinning goodbye stuck in my mind,
that little-to-nothing container that could
disappear anytime in an ultrafast now-
you-do/now-don’t moment.
I hold myself aloof from the growl
in an animal throat, teeth glistening
over hours bleeding, blurring the altar
where a DANCER marries DANGER
on a perfectly made day. No one’s missing.
Only dawn light and the knowledge
that night will suck this
and everything else into its fuckwit mouth.

Jean Paul Gaultier Watch with Virgin Mary Dial (ca. 1990–2007)

Cloud Nine

Spareness can sometimes paradoxically speak
volumes: idiosyncratic interstitial
display cases, walls that are elastic
yet restricted in terms of expansion.
I’m describing the brain, which requires blood
to be pushed without pause
out of a heart, mammalian
or mechanical. Even so, survival relies
on the neuron. A flood of dopamine
and there you go, euphoria. Incitement galore.
Heaps and heaps of walking on air.
The Midday Limited held
at the depot while at the beach:
Winnie, Brownie, and their friend, the umbrella.
The scalding hourglass sand sifting
nonstop. It ends up
defining a day—the way clouds can mean
a chance of change. In the sky, angels
are nothing more than floating heads, which
is odd, given they don’t think, only fly.
Center stage, Venus reborn
as Mary, Jesus posing as Eros the love child.

The Virgin and Child in the Clouds (artist unknown (Italian), ca. 1470)

Portrait of Mary

Send her wherever you like, even back
to her deathbed—despite the fact she’d rather be living.
Since it’s easy to imagine her yessing,
have her say yes as she walks through an ocean of noes.
Take her prints by dipping her hand in a vat of ink.
Hand those off to someone whose mind refuses
to quiet. You know, don’t you, she’ll outlast
the monsters who hide beneath floorboards,
the creatures featured in nightmares, the gun blasts
matched by politicos who make trumpets of their asses,
and not least, the hairless billionaires standing in line—
waiting to bow down before a gold-filled rodent.

Portrait of Mary III (Her Many Eyes), ink on paper (Yoko Ono, 1962)