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.