Upon Reading of the Death of Chagall’s Wife

I’ve been waiting for this
like your wife vertical
with death, head like
a Ouija cursor cocked
to the side.

In a puddle of acrylic blue
paint, I’ve been waiting
for the dead to speak
to me again—the dead
so often speaks to us
through the avant-garde.
I may be the only one
who listens.

I plan to take a train,
ride it into Chagall’s
comparable time, bare,
naked into the Modern
Museum of Art,
become Bella, black
with hair like the Dark
Lady—Shakespeare’s
darkness missing
and floating with white
death into the cubist
horizon, Picasso watches.

I will stand and observe
true love, still like exiled
Trotsky. I will vomit tears—
tears emerged from
the womb for the first time.
The birth of passion, they
will slide like paint drenched
in linseed oil.

Gazing at your comparable
time on a canvas, I will hold
the hand of air, and he, like
God, will never whisper
to me—never share in
the psychotic passion
I was born with twenty
days post Chagall’s death.

Your fauvist strokes will
call to me, and then, I’ll
know, and like Plath,
maybe I’ll see the other
side of this monumental
grotesque joke. And maybe
I’ll laugh—but I doubt I’ll
ever know what life is.

Chagall, do I escape,
or do I stay in reality’s
grip? How did you manage
to stay grounded with your
wife floating to the ether?
I’m always chasing
the avant-garde, begging
it for whispers,

the only psychology I need.