Daniel Morris

From 13 Ways of Thinking About the Bonnard Exhibit at the Phillips

Let’s Face It, Bonnard Was Kind of a Dick

1.

Why is me is most don’t live in

art don’t want winged

turning point warnings want so

“post” anyway all that woe and wire

Pierre prefer richer poon vs

Little Stiff no tunes so why not

illustrate just us control freaks

in a flophouse tub while you make

Marthe the Maid that Shiksa

gown of compliance that discotheque of

tubular planes coming

to learn the lie of the example

of some other guy staring forward

2.

Done plucking peonies Pierre

Laps up Au Pere as if firing daises

with glazed slip could confuse

abandoning beauty altogether

while we mid-level stumble bums

pour over state coffee

cabernet and camembert in

Phillips café extremely unstable

retro table why so slant

a Cezanne of course to that slowing

Schlimazel spilling himself as if

Suffering were metaphor for waiting

for nothing or is it merely

eyes have compliance as brainiacs

stain uniforms of security mix peach

Inside extended family portrait until

fuzzy becoming this cake-like

alternative resembles whole plumbing

black stockings shadow boxing

Pierre Bonnard please

we beg you quit that croquet

lost by design black cat among

soft porn mum shit and just get us off

Daniel Morris is author of eight books on twentieth- and twenty-first century poetry and visual culture, editor or coeditor of five essay collections, and author of four books of poetry. Recent titles include Not Born Digital (Bloomsbury), Blue Poles (Marsh Hawk Press), a paperback reissue of his study of Nobel Laureate Louise Glück (University of Missouri Press), Essays and Interviews on Contemporary American Poets, Poetry, and Pedagogy: A Thirty-Year Creative Reading Workshop, and, as editor, The Cambridge Companion to American Poetry and Politics since 1900. Daniel’s poems have appeared in the Colorado Review, Denver Quarterly, Agni, Western Humanities Review, Southern Humanities Review, Talisman, River City, and many other print and online journals. He is a Full Professor of English at Purdue, where he has taught since 1994.