Looking at Schnabel's The Death of Fashion with my son
By Nick Twemlow
As we stood
In the unreflective
Pall of the canvas
Neatly pocketed by broken
Plates, light
Swallowed by
The sickly sweet strokes
Of crap paint
Clumsily
Slapped across it,
I picked up Sacha
& asked
Him
If it might be
A bit much,
The painting's title? but
He already had designs
On the Brancusi
He had glimpsed
In the Des Moines Art Center
Catalogue, which he then pawed
On the floor of the
Entrance room—
So plush were the couches
I fell asleep
Reclining into one.
Woke in a fright,
Turned off the lights!
Walked into a courtyard
Terrifically cold—the water-
Fall tending my dreams
Froze midstream,
Reflecting brilliant
Fresnel light!
The artist
I follow from year
To year, sometimes
Years pass
But I find him
Launching another
Lantern down the river
Frozen to river-
Bottom
& so I
Whispered into
Sacha's delicate
Ear—are we able
To meet these
Monuments as is?
What if, say, you had happened
Upon a David Salle painting
(Rarer these days)?
What if your stepmother
Was in the same art class
In high school as Salle,
Doodled the same
Inane nothing-of-notes,
Desperate for a way
Out, not just of this class
But of this gap
Between herself &
What she might
Want to become.
David Salle, don't
Sweat the small
Devils detailing
Your
Lamborghini Countach
(Sounds so garish,
To talk this way
About the '80s, I mean
That model was like
The Ford Escort
Of the Jet Set)
& then David Salle
Went on to snort
The entire decade
Into his rectum. She
Demurred
Rightly, the pain
Ticked into my
Stepmother &
Soon enough her spine
Began off-gassing
A barbiturate haze
Five miles in every
Direction.
This feeling we all
Know each other
From some past life
Spent holding hands
Walking over the precipice
Into the volcanic bowels
Of Hell, this otherness,
Fixed into a buried
Set of neurons native
To homo sapiens sapiens,
Has surfaced surfaced
With a fury,
Furious with spouts
Of pepper spray
Spraying
The frozen air
Waiting for history's
Next victim to occupy,
Occupies the space
In front of it.
The snow,
I wrote,
To paraphrase
Myself, to interpret or
Delay
My words, to rework,
Remix, mash up,
Redifine, defile,
Lift, smash, plagiarize,
Borrow, beg, steal,
Augment, as homage I
Distill my words
Into a bitter rye,
Drink it to bottoms
Up!
I looked out,
I had my protagonist
Look out of a wintry
Window, each snowflake
Like a soldier whipping
A horse yoked
To a chariot,
This Greece,
This Rome,
This vatic
Impulse to stay
Connected swirling
All round, said
In passing,
My soul swooned
Slowly
As I heard
The snow
Falling faintly,
Through
The universe
& faintly falling,
Like the descent
Of its last end.
So you
Tell me
How your
Radical formalism
Saves lives
Exactly?
What I've got on view
Out my office window
Is luxurious paradisiacal
Snow stirring in me
A soul-destroying
Desire to snort some
Adderall,
After all.
This could be your
Legacy, Sacha,
This art
You have been
Forced to feed on
For eons.
I
Sink into the
Couch in my office,
Fall asleep
Watching Stalker,
Slowly fall
To the bottom
Of the never-ending
Well,
This tonic,
Murmur—
Something about making
Sure all the locks were
Locked.
I don't know
If I checked them.
So I check them
Repeatedly.
This bedroom farce
A ray of sun
Fazing across
The televised haze
Of some future
My son takes out
A second, maybe
Third mortgage on,
He plugs into the din—
His cryo-mortal coil.
I can't wait
Until he goes loco
Slurping snow cones,
Lisps with asps
In ancient Egypt.
The overdub
Is imperfect, a few frames
Late, so when
Sacha looks at
"The Death of Fashion"
Hanging against this
Well-lit wall &
Says, "This looks like
Garbage," the only word
That matches his mouth
Is the end of everything.
No one goes out
Like this
Copyright Credit: Nick Twemlow, "Looking at Schnabel’s The Death of Fashion with my son" from Attributed to the Harrow Painter. Copyright © 2017 by Nick Twemlow. Reprinted by permission of University of Iowa Press.