"An
Open Book"
ink
and collage on paper, scroll book in two segments, overall dimensions
135" X 56", 1989;
top segment dimensions 135" X 26"; bottom segment dimensions
112" X 26".
the following typewritten text appears in the top center of this section:
I weep in the champion's seat. How could I have won?
What about the time my best friend told me to wait at the top of the hill till his brother came to get me: as I stepped under the tree near the stream a log about 2 and 1/2 feet fell to the ground five feet in front of me. They always said my mom was five feet. I felt like crying--but I suppressed feeling as I was wont to do anyway, never ever feeling any feeling, they were all too painful and so now I cry in the winner's box and hasn't there been a mistake? Nearly crying at my wedding: the image of myself as a Greek god fractured, a hairline crack in that split second when the rose of sex floated in the middle of the church like a cloud. The pink cloud that crossed the sun and stole the gold from the sea. The cloud passed: the gold on the sea again, sparkling on the swell. The giant aloes. The rainbow over the mudflat of Ojos Negros and the one ramshackle shop next to the shut down filling station. Mountains covered in sprinkled boulders. Shouldn't I know their names by this time in my life? Dale has died. Left alone on the porch to fend for himself all winter long one last angry fork pitched in through the kitchen window misfired and went straight to his heart. The miserable soul. Do I really believe anyone gleans sense from this? So why tell my tale so? Next day will I follow myself further into this web. Drops of dew glisten on the gossamer labyrinth behind my wife, the blue sea outlines her naked body. We kissed bathing on the cliff in a tub of hot water and star flies and flocks of lightning flew above us. Shells from the shore washed up during the high tide assembled in the sand a necklace of benevolence that I left tonight in my solitude and place over her head. The blue sea outlines her naked body. Night weeps in the gutter and chases its tail around the moon.