Art & Poetry by Kate Peper

 Mother,

do you ever feel you’re not as fresh

                                                down there?

In the 70’s ad, a mother’s crocheted sleeve

encircles her daughter’s shoulders.

They walk in a soft-focused world

of sand and golden sun.

O daughter,

has your apple blossom browned a little?

Daughter’s cheeks pink, pink, pink.

Mother’s eyes spoon her up like steamed milk.

Time for a douche

to bring back the sweetness

of honeysuckle dew.

With a swig of Sweet Romance,

we can all swish back to spring—

halter tops, hip-huggers,

and a freshness beginning deep within.

There’s always a buzz

around a woman blooming,

with every breath

she exhales confidence and fecundity.

Look how the lady’s-slipper awaits a foot.

Ephemera

After The Things Themselves: Pictures of Dust by Vik Muniz, Whitney Museum.

The dust that eddied in corners or under benches of that famous museum were saved from brooms and power vacs. Months of cobwebs, nail polish, bits of scalp, feathers, sand from Central Park, pencil shavings and hair—lots of hair—that gave his drawings a sepia look, even the breakdown of the art itself, its wood, plaster, or paint went into the mix.

Fuliginous, Muniz called the sooty stuff he sprinkled or smeared, worked onto paper like charcoal, lots of darks, the lights lifted out with fingers, all of it rendered into recreations of Minimilist icons: Smith’s Die, Serra’s Prop, exact duplicates of the original, a blending of art, artist and patron then photographed, framed, and hung.

Years after the show, I discover the photographs online, a few words on the artist, the show itself. I imagine the opening reception, viewers walking past the photos, while more hair, bread crumbs, napkins, fall, and a few floors up in a darkened room, Judd’s stack piece and La Va’s diptych hush as if listening to a river’s rushing, a river made of dust.

Kate Peppers (Fairfax, CA) www.peperprojects.com