Aleyt Considers all the earthly delights
My friends ask me, Aleyt they’ll say, “What’s that
wacky husband of yours painting today?”
I usually shrug and pour them drinks. Its best to
appear indifferent.
I go out to the studio early
in the morning before he’s up.
(He stays up late you know, painting
and drinking. He’ll end by washing
his brushes and having his town friends in.)
They leave behind a mess of paint
and tobacco and food. They piss in cups.
The place stinks like semen and old ale.
I breathe it.
I roam about his studio with its view of the hills.
I watch the mist laze over the fields, and I wonder
about this man I’ve married. Mama told me it was
a mistake, but I was seduced by art,
whatever that means.
Look there is a song tattooed on a man’s buttocks.
Men riding birds and women eating
cherries out of eggshells. Pink fairy buildings
and exotic animals. He’s started on
this next part. Dark he tells me.
It’s about hell and the evils that await man.
He’s sleeping there, slumped in a pile
over some rags and drop cloths,
snoring over the birdsong of early morning.
I take one of his brushes, dip it in some paint,
still wet from the day before, and drag
it slowly across his upper lip.
He rubs his face and rolls over. Is that me,
I wonder? Peering into the painting, as I consider
a naked woman in the foreground holding a fish…her hair looks
exactly like mine.
