O commodities trader
with hallucinating toddler soul,
you coax monstrous floral puppies
to romp through museums,
space-age rabbits to eat
silver carrots on plexiglass altars.
Overpaid street entertainer, balloon artist.

After the shimmer of Monet’s careful,
controlled pastel sensations,
after Renoir’s dancing woman
with a face full of light,
after rooms of dim American landscapes,
the constructed shadows of Dutch masters,
your colors saturate my eyes.
Play-doh yellows, electric fuchsias.

A bright frightening kitten
crawls out of an acid-blue plastic sock
twice my height, its head flanked
by giant daisy barrettes
and monster clothespins, its pink
kitten tongue barely visible,
as if it were hungry, or about to speak,
whispering a secret of salvation.

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* On the Exhibition of the Broad Collection at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, 2002
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Jeannine Hall Gailey’s book, Becoming the Villainess, will be published in spring 2006 by Steel Toe Books. Her chapbook, Female Comic Book Superheroes, is available from Pudding House Press and from her web site, www.webbish6.com. She’s the senior poetry editor of Silk Road.
E-mail: webbish6 at hotmail dot com
More information on Jeannine Hall Gailey’s new book
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