Marge Simon and Bruce Boston
 
 

HARLEQUIN REVERSAL

Fully costumed, Picasso's subject poses sideways on
a wooden chair. His stillness wrapped in monochrome
rose.

You choose the print backed by cardboard. Take it
with you to cruise along the coast in a no frills
'84 used-car-lot Caddy.

In the white noise silence of the road you try
conversation. The Harlequin never answers, but
sometimes you detect his mouth twinge as if he is
about to smile.

What remains is free so you claim what you need.
The Harlequin needs nothing. Still you bring him
along in a cart, grabbing cans from the shelves of
empty convenience stores. You lean him against a
fender or rest him on the hood to admire while
pumping gas at unattended stations. You hang him
for the night on the walls of deserted motels.

Where the coastline ends and the road crumbles
to cliffside debris, the sick yellow clouds catch
up with you. You and Picasso's cardboard clown,
who won't play the role no matter the costume and
color he wears.

In his world he remains inviolate, touched by neither
lovers nor friends. He sits poised and alone, nurturing
circumstance in the theater of his mind. He dissolves
beside you. The cardboard cracking in folds that turn
rose to uneven red.

You must search for another subject painted in shades
of monochrome by the brush of the dead master. But blue
next time. All blue for the drive along the coast.
 

 
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            Art by Pablo Picasso, Harlequin Sitting on a Red Couch, 1905.