Hello Friends —
I’m happy to report Operation Distribute Pocket Poems in Long Beach was a success! I hope you enjoyed Poem in Your Pocket Day in your own way.
Today’s poem is by the unofficial poet laureate of Berkeley, California, Julia Vinograd — who has been blowing bubbles and recording street life on Telegraph Avenue for the past 40 years. She also holds an MFA from the University of Iowa (that’s like the poetry equivalent of an MBA from Harvard, very fancypants prestigious).
Sometimes reading hurts —
Ellen
WHAT PICASSO DID TO ME
I got this big thick heavy hardcover Picasso book
with pictures, platitudes, basically poundage
and carrying it home I pulled a muscle in my wrist.
My right hand’s gone cubist,
angles askew as Picasso’s women
crying into pointed teeth and sideways jaws.
My wrist throbs with the last scream of Guernica;
I’ve become too historical to haul myself into a bus
or pour tea,
I even use my other hand in the bathroom.
Picasso’s painted me into a corner
where the blind man sits
pulling my muscle on his blue guitar.
In the bullring my wrist’s already trampled
into the bloody sand
among thrown Spanish roses and oranges.
Neither bull nor matador know I’m alive
but I am alive, my wrist hurts.
The wars got into my wrist,
it’s all in the wrist.
Picasso’s using my wrist to paint
curly women and naked minotaurs
and I want my wrist back.
I’d like to throw the book at Picasso,
I want out of his book that bit me,
I’ve got an ace bandage and a grudge
while cubist tears roll down billboard faces.
So the paint won’t leak out. Or the pain.
Or the world spilling out of my wrist, hurting.