Still Life with Half-Turned Woman and Questions

after Merwin & Hammershoi

Q. So, what are you working on these days?
     A metaphor machine.

Q. What did you paint first?
     A table that glints with the self-assurance of a rack.

Q. And next?
     A bowl with the pale, rotund mien of a bureaucrat—it’s the ideal receptacle for a severed head.
     Then bottles, side by side, like the hard parallels of a double-barreled shotgun.

Q. What’s that hanging on the wall, to the left of the table?
     A mirror.
     A window.
     A sliding panel cut in the door of a solitary confinement cell.
     A gray eye gone rectangular with its own blindness.

Q. No really—what’s that on the wall?
     Another picture.

Q. Why is she turned away?
     Because she chose to wear the hex on her forehead.
     Because she failed to gleam.
     Because she interrupted.

Q. Why can’t you sleep?
     Why can’t you sleep?

Q. Why can’t I sleep?
     Because of all these little unfacings.