“To Be Looked At (From the Other Side of the Glass) With One Eye, Close To, for Almost an Hour”

after Duchamp, 1918
for Lisa B.

squinting I saw you fragmented like rain or glass, splintered
the way time broke into the number of paintings
or how many seconds you could study Monet and still get
the point or how I came around the corner to Wyeth’s
Christina’s World or finding something new and feeling
my heart leap into my eyes and Lucien Freud with his
whippets and nudes, what would Sigmund say? But
there’s no time for contemplation because twenty
dollars for two hours is ten dollars an hour I can
still do simple math even after three days in New
York City (four dinners, two movies, one play,
countless glasses of wine, one overpriced martini,
two trips to H&M, one bowl of soup, three Stellas)
& what makes it more worthwhile than you
waiting up like the mother you are and we're eating
chocolate and wanting to go home but never
to leave and all the pictures and the notes scrawled
in Moleskins, the coffee consumed and the bagels
Central Park and the simple sensation of strolling
up and down the streets, rain or not, and the subway
ride and the taxis and I want to see the whole thing
up close again, both eyes open because if art can be this