I saw Lucretia's bodice
crawling with jewels,
knife slightly lateral
to the long axis of her fist--
how a dagger draws light
to a central ridge and
those calculating eyes!

After Van Rijn, Reubens
seemed-- well, cartoonish,
so we did the Impressionists
where the crowds always thicken
like the light. "Olive Pickers"
was a Van Gogh I hadn't seen,
but I saw the swirls beneath the swirls
already forming in his vision.

Later, Picasso's "Lovers,"
rendered classical by second nature
beyond any first I know, wonderful
in yellow and blue pastel--
and he draws the best hands!

At day's end I found it easier
to dwell on Mondrian's perfect geometries,
premillennial corporate logos, or how
in Lichtenstein the wisps of smoke
from thick-lipped dames turn into dots
unlike Seurat's: infinitely separate.



Black Walnut

Imagine a woman whose mascara never ran,
June Cleaver in heels doing dishes
with nostrils red as a dog's glans,
philtrum chapped, Kleenex stuffed
in sleeves, not even thirty.

Sneezing, weeping, losing weight--
she couldn't nurse us.
Antihistamines, martinis, air conditioning--
nothing could stanch her swollen faucets
or purify her filmy eyes.
She told me she thought of suicide.

Today I saw the species, fronds
nearly identical to poison sumac.
I read when attacked by bugs
it telegraphs an SOS through roots
to others, augmenting herd immunity.

Mom could not adapt as well as these,
whose hard green fruit resembles limes
save for the black, adamantine core
whose nuts are not worth searching for.

When we met in your backyard, home
to dead trucks and a packrat sculptor's offal,
you pointed to a walnut, saying:
"I wish someone would cut it down--"
something about its roots, your garden,
how it blocked your view.

CE Chaffin



CE Chaffin is a SoCal native and attended UCLA. His poetry collection, Elementary, is available through Amazon.Com He has been widely published on the web and in print. He is editor of The Melic Review and belongs to the Zeugma on-line poetry workshop.