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Dorothy was a beautiful poetess who wrote in bird song, but her wings were ingrown and useless, the cotyledon of a barren womb. I was new to the city when I met her at a roof party. The landlords all moved to the suburbs, so we broke open the roof hatches and carried up guitars and bottles of wine. The height constrained our dancing, we were like bats holding on with our feet and swaying upside down over the floor of the sky. Dorothy moved a pale angel light among our black excesses, she seemed to know what it was like to fall and she carried a hunchback of where she once landed. Things that drop out of the sky become grotesque and disfigured when they hit earth, only poets can see in them the forms of heaven. Because of her deformity Dorothy never married, but there were a fashion of men she made herself invisible to. She made her poetry out of the personal ads she clipped from the Village Voice and they read like the tatoos beat on a hollow heart: your mission: to be my Apollo 7,8,9...forever. you are the sun to my moon you fly to my arms you eye my mons you diamond eudaemon. Like many of the poets and artists who are attracted to the glory of the city, Dorothy flamed out and moved back to the provinces. Still, I sometimes see the suggestion of her mind silhouetted in the arch prose of the daily personals. |
| 6/26/01 | oil on linen | 15 1/2"w X 17 1/2"h |
