Mary Wearing More Armor
It’s only half armor, made for more
or less friendly combat
where the registered contestants—
on foot—use swords to score points.
The participants are kept separate
by a barrier called “a barrier”
in the form of a waist-high fence.
Mary delivers a hit, gets a point.
Sports bore her.
She doesn’t need armor
on her legs since the fence protects.
That’s what it’s there for. It’s actually
as if she doesn’t have legs. If she did
have them, she’d surely use them
to escape this violence.
O Mary O, where would you go?
Half Armor, Italian, steel with gilding, leather, and fabric, ca. 1600–10,
A Hat Can Conceal
A hat can conceal the defects of a head
that has inside it a stuffed platypus that was once
housed in a glass cabinet in far off Poland.
That memory will go on living almost forever.
The day was hot, the tree outside the oldest
we’d ever see. So we were told.
I said, “Maybe.” I knew that something wasn’t
true just because someone said so.
A woman playing at being a docent said,
“An illusion can sometimes be overcome.”
Someone asked, “Where?” The faux docent said,
“Not at the top of the hilltop acropolis.
It’s difficult to breathe in that rarefied air.”
A boy puffed up with pride came on stage,
stood in the center, and began to excitedly sing
In the Kingdom of Poms Poms and Pompous Houses.
I pulled my hat down around my ears, the better
to hide a few of my many imperfections.
Mary with a Red Hat, Franz Stuck, ca. 1902
Self-Portrait in Glass
My sister and I are dressed
in worlds of our own.
She’s reading a book.
I’m looking at wall art.
I see myself
in the glass—I’m driving a red car
with frayed brakes
down the ill-fated incline
of an icy highway.
I’m saying “O, O, O”
while the open aperture
of the hand-held camera is acting
like an insomniac eye.
The descent boggles the mind,
in part because the scene
is so exciting. And yet,
language will only ask, “Do you
want to know where you’re going?”
Mary Cassatt in the Paintings Gallery at the Louvre, Edgar Degas, ca. 1879–80