Shirley Clarke to Her Shrink
Persephone Phoenix / Debra Rymer

Some past resident pasted a decal storyboard
in my neighbor’s suite of the little Dutch
pair–boy and girl–of course
we were inured to sugar then
so no one remarked on the final
decal with the boy in the canal.
I remembered it a year later when the lover
in that apartment drowned in Amsterdam.
He was living theatre and then he died
in a canal, buying a boat, she said,
the girlfriend. I heard it in the elevator,
thought poor girl, though her suite is lovely,
I’d never live there. She looks like Elaine
from behind ducking into a taxi.
I want to tell her it’s better to walk–
to feel the world through the bottoms of your feet,
see it close enough to catch the track marks
on the falling arm. Even when it’s ugly.
Especially when it hurts.

I owe that to you; I admit I was reluctant
when you suggested a change, my heart!
My very heart hardened into a fist. Elaine
thinks but never says I am stubborn like
the old man. I swear it wasn’t, but romance, two
decades in love with dance. You were right.

It was always the small movements–fingers
snapping like a fan, a slow shrugged shoulder
loose as a pocket. They can’t see
it from the third row you have to be there
maybe lying down with the lens
aimed right at that elbow even if
it puts you in kicking range.

I want to tell my neighbor at the Chelsea
Isn’t the red of home glorious? Like a whore
in the middle of the street, laced up
in wrought iron. I saw her packing
boxes in the hall the decals too constant
a ghost. I’m lucky my ghosts, those bullies
get caught on film. I laugh when
I pack them in cannisters.