self portrait as the woman obsessed with a dead man

from the archives...this was "finished", i believe, in the fall of 2001. almost 5 years later, and it seems more "about" my life now than it did even then. i have long felt that my poems were almost predictive; soothsayers in their own right. i suppose this buttresses my theory.

MARK ROTHKO CALLS AT ONE A.M.

Mark Rothko, I have been trying hard to stop
loving you. I have been thinking of the world
in every shade but yours,
I have been hanging Andy Warhol
on the wall and saying there’s nothing behind
it...I just pass my hands over the surfaces of things.

Still, a wash of Bordeaux on the sheets in the morning
when I wake up, heavy to my feet; how I know
you have been here again: your color on the linens,
the ceiling splitting like the heads of gods and your brain
matter dripping out, the sheets where you slept darkening,
darkening.

Last night, as I was trying to conjure you from the
shadows you left on the pillow,
you called. Said I need to ask you to do something
very important--I need you to do me this one favor.

I thought maybe you were drunk again and wanted to get married.

You wanted the scores for Monday Night Football.

Said you were a little drunk, a bottle of St-Estèphe.

The scores cross the screen and you have lost,
Mark Rothko, and finally I fall back
stretching the chiarascuro of the blankets
flat, your gesture smoothed out.

I even paint them black.

But Mark Rothko, every morning Andy Warhol sees
my fingers strangled in the bedclothes and says your name,
says pentimento, from the Italian meaning
repentance, meaning I am sorry, Mark Rothko, you could
not love me, meaning I paint over your pattern,
but you reappear.