In the Presences of Louise Bourgeois

Knobs

protrusions

(suggestive of intrusions)
 

organs: armored, 

veiled

ringed, never fully naked
 

Leg of lamb

I salute you
 

I enter the museum as I do the mountains

or stand by the waterfall—
 

approaching each room as space 

of “human being” [John Dewey]
 

each object a presence

Under the spider
 

alien

difficult mother

This thing of darkness

I acknowledge mine
 

What is it 

to dangle in space
 

(Terror of sex

when you feel alone)
 

The digit/genitals

half sheathed

knobbed ends worn

(hard materials can show

mortality’s wear    we do not

see our own bones)
 

I, too, worn and scarred

Vulva, vagina

unrooted, rerouted

opened, closed, reopened,

scleral
 

White black brown 

gray hives piles pilings

LUMPS 

preserved in mud
 

Yes, lumps 

but wet,

animate


Malformed Dog
Swedish painting, 1690
 

I.
 

So you, too,

lived on this earth

among the billions

of creatures,

and the many

who were also pe-

culiar or hobbled.
 

Did the

painter love you

at first sight,

to include you here, behind

a royal carriage,

absorbed in your 

wholly own

inner world?

Your back arcs over

legs too close together

(front and back),

accustomed

to stones from boys,

kicks from men,

you hide your tail.
 

Still, your eyes 

glint as does

the black

nose at the end of your 

creamy snout,

moist, labile, and alive.
 

II.
 

A funny sight you must

have been, running, like 
 

a narrow three-storied house

zipping along: ba-dum, ba-dum
 

ba-dum. Who says there’s only 

one way to carry on in this world?                             
 

When I first saw you in the palm 

of my hand, I felt I knew you. 
 

Next day, my own back went.

I crawled and cried, yowled 
 

when I tried to stand. Surely they’d 

have shot you if you’d suffered so.                               
 

III.
 

I see now that he painted you

when he himself was sixty-two
 

and guess that he knew a little

about pain and deterioration.
 

Dogs and nobles were his main

subject, with a horse thrown
 

in from time to time. They rode

their steeds and curs hard, and him
 

too, I’m guessing. It happens when

you aren’t top of heap: the curvature,
 

the giving, the bones out of place.
But you: trotting along, you owned it.