Virginia Konchan

AFTER SCHIELE

You are working the strewn look and it is working,
Great Depression aesthete. Torn undergarments,

mussed hair: the situation is dire, the social
body, vexed. What will be your form of redress?

Eternal facelessness? Were you beaten? Raped?
What, after you shake off the loose dirt of 2-D,

will I liken you to? Will you harvest a cuneiform
name, like Alice? It's the unseen whore who haunts.

VITA NOVA

Martha was the first to rail: If you had been there,
he would not have died. Mary was silent, twisting
a tissue in her hands. No, not Kleenex: it was a rag.

Kleenex had not yet been invented. Before long,
all three of them were weeping. Did he attempt
to seduce? Or is rhetoric the root of the Latinate,

& therefore superfluous self? Lazarus walked
toward the astonished crowd, while not himself
astonished: just enjoying your average happiness.

He reached out to shake Jesus' hand, warily, as if
conceding to the better politician. The hand of
God was clammy, life a touch stranger than death.