Self-Portrait With Michelangelo

In the Star Theater of Rome, NY I paint ceilings

on the ladder to heaven where the air is thin.

After a few brushstrokes I sit on the top rung

to savor the figures of light and shadow on screen.

I’ll want to save them—but also send some to an island

where they can’t beguile or terrify. It’s a revelation

to come out of the theater so absorbed by their voices

and grimaces, these acts of creation, translucent as we are,

substantial and eternal, a state of mind the body

can’t kill off, as when Liza’s away on Guadeloupe,

muse to herself only, I conjure her sketching a waterfall,

eating cassava and christophene, hoarding perfumes

and scarves in Pointe-a-Pitre. She’s all flashes

and cloudbursts, there’s infinitesimal movement

between the frames so you can’t register

the changes. I call her Liza so you’re attached to her

and the name Liza: she has reddish-brown hair

and green eyes, smiles too much and loves to swim

too close to sharks. I don’t want her

swallowed up by life itself. Because she’s

a complete stranger I’m endlessly curious:

isn’t that love, knowing and not knowing,

framing a gesture to make her familiar?

I make everything up: her jasmine scent,