Marianne Szlyk writes

Thelma at the Prado
            After Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights

Hell might as well be on another planet,
circling a distant, winking star.

Musical instruments litter the parched surface
where the damned swarm out from a shattered bass. 

Bosch has tattooed musical notes
on naked bodies strewn across hard stone.

Beside an overturned table, a gap-toothed girl glares.
Balancing a die on her head like a halo,

she sings off-key to a rabbit’s blasts on a pipe.
In the background, all buildings burn.

Sinners break ranks like beetles,
riding knives on the acidic river

to escape the flames and the artist’s gaze.
The Garden of Earthly Delights [center panel] -- Hieronymus Bosch

The Garden of Earthly Delights [left panel] -- Hieronymus Bosch

The Garden of Earthly Delights [center panel] -- Hieronymus Bosch

Marianne Szlyk writes

Northbound after the Heatwave

Coils of hay darken.

Longed for rain lashes the bus

heading to DC.

Outside the thick air

clots lungs. Inside we breathe

cool air; we shiver.

The bus moans, a ship

braving vast waves. East wind drives

leaves onto the road.

Mountains dissolving,

riders sleep, play games, text friends.

Rain and fog close in.

Mountains dissolved, rain

stops. Fog clings to leaves, fades to

touch. We live by sight.

Above, clouds shred, take

on colors of Van Gogh’s crow,

blue jay, mourning dove.

 

Wheatfield with Crows [detail] -- Vincent van Gogh

Wheatfield with Crows -- Vincent van Gogh

Marianne Szlyk writes

Meditation on Blue

Chicory blooms blue
against the sun-bleached lawn. Drought
makes these flowers fierce.

As the YouTube video of Janis Joplin and the typewriter streams from the laptop, Callie imagines that someone’s girlfriend sits with her hands poised over the keyboard of her graduation present. A man operates the tape recorder. Another man plays guitar. No one’s girlfriend, Janis sings “Trouble in Mind.” Her voice doesn’t yet burn and scorch. Neither does her laughter.  

This picture is too simple. Too simple.

At the very least, Janis might have been playing, too. Callie sees the picture of her with a guitar. Not yet charred in the flame of California sunshine and heroin, Janis sings about going down to the Texas river that winds through humidity and past plants you don’t find out west. Perhaps a young man was typing. Men typed in the military back then. Callie pictures Radar O’Reilly, glasses and all, typing nonsense while Janis sang about how blue she was. Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of our party. The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog while young Janis sings. 

Birds seeking water
in gutters find only
last year’s maple leaves.

[a haibun that I wrote after Angelee Deodhar died]

  

Janis Joplin in the early 1960s