after Milton Avery’s Husband and Wife
I
My face flames sardonic disdain
at your cool averted gaze and
I wonder – where did it all go wrong?
when did our love flatten into its middle age
& wilt like the houseplant behind us?
(maybe it was when you suggested Freud could
explain my inadequacies, or when I proclaimed
you too inadequate to understand Freud)
Why are we stuck to the sofas in eternal repose?
we have been framed as failed artists,
lazy cats lounging in society boredom,
yet the real crime here
is my beige-brown coat & jeans,
& your azure dress of constant skies,
when everything should be monochrome.
II
Your face burns cherry awkwardness at
my unbothered icy gaze &
I have no occasion to wonder why I don’t love
you anymore, or why already flattened things can’t be compressed further…
we were never going to be chrysanthemums
(remember when I discovered the plastic bouquet
you’d bought for that other girl, & mine
was somewhere sickly in the garden of my imagination?)
Why is your cigar smokeless and unburning?
we have been framed as lovers,
yet the real crime here
is the unbearable condemnation of the title
Husband and Wife.