Kyle Laws

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Lipstick Urinals,
Rachel Lachowicz

The same guard who warned me away from
an untitled sculpture of fluorescent tubes
because I was too close, is on his knees
with flashlight, nose in Lipstick Urinals.

I start laughing, tell him how silly he looks
especially after reigning me in, 
but he goes on to say
he has to inspect them 3 times a day
because people touch,
and I keep laughing even as he points
to the smear of candy apple red lipstick
on the wall beside the center urinal.

 

Blue

In a room on Willow Drive
in Schooner Landing
with a white leather couch
against an off-white wall
hangs the blue nude by Picasso.

A picture window
and two side windows
are covered with white
open weave drapes. 
There is a low blue table
in front of the white couch
with a puzzle that will never
be finished—so if you sit
on the couch there is something
to do with your hands if
your husband's lover is in the room. 

There is a puzzled expanse
over which neither of them
can reach you.
There is a piece of furniture
that could be viewed as art
between you and them. 
Your husband could be
on the couch with you, or not. 
It does not matter if he is
at your side.
You have the blue nude,
the period before cubism,
the pieces in front of you.
You only have to assemble them.
They could become either
The Picture of Dora Maar
in realism, or its abstraction.

There is only bare color to work with— 
3 blue walls with windows, doors,
openings onto other rooms,
stairs to other levels
and here where you sit—
the one solid white wall.
It is they who are unsteady, unsure.

You have created this room
with its bold color,
the red floor.

 

Kyle Laws'  collections include My Visions Are As Real As Your Movies, Joan of Arc Says to Rudolph Valentino (dancing girl press), George Sand’s Haiti (co-winner of Poetry West’s 2013 award), Storm Inside the Walls (little books press), Going into Exile (Abbey Chapbooks), Tango (Kings Estate Press), and Apricot Wounds Straddling the Sky (Poetry Motel’s Suburban Wilderness Press).  She is editor of Casa de Cinco Hermanas Press.  www.kylelaws.com