Not So Good Bones
an ancient monastery vault in Switzerland
human bones and teeth bought at a store in SoHo
specify your needs pay our price we’ll get you anything:
scapulae, claviculae, vertebrae, ribs
the strangely fused sacrum, the coccyx
the tiny little brittle bones of the hand
fat femurs and tibiae
slender fibulae
solid heel bones
brown molars and incisors
an array of calcification
laid out on plain wooden tables the Shakers could have made
© MPJ, 2002 – After visiting Jenny Holzer’s
exhibition at Kartause Ittingen, Sept/Oct 1996
Contrasts
october
grey dreary
shiny golden curtains
sombre line
sudden orange on black-brown
paper smoothness
under slender limbs
balcony
fading daisies
spread wings
orange flashing on black-brown
northward-dipping
turning south
light
eaves
gone
© MPJ, Berne, 2002
Essence of Rose
deep, dark red
endless-seeming stem
perfect but drooping head
bejewelled –
rejected
condemned –
garbage
compulsion
to salvage
restore to former glory
hours later
glowing velvet head
still droops
atop much shortened stem –
another useless attempt –
© MPJ 2002
The Grandmother
Sitting in her wheelchair by the table
Wispy-haired
Skin near transparent
Her puckered jaws working on food
Whose taste or texture have become irrelevant
Nodding off from time to time
Ensconced in the greater silence
Now her hearing has gone
Still in her lucid moments
She’ll cast her mind back
To when she had nothing –
It made her ungenerous in everything
Except her smile
That beams at visitors
Whom she greets like strangers
When they catch her eye
Among them all her daughter matters most
And her daughter’s daughters
And their daughters again –
Their faces she does remember
And when they come she proudly
Calls them by their names
Remembering the little hand that
Held her life
And helped her get through wartime famine.
showcase
