by Alex Nodopaka
Museum Visit
after Elliot Hundley’s “eyes that run like leaping fire” (mixed media, 2011)
I have heard of an artist who divided the world
into a thousand three-meter squares, each labeled
with 3 words, scrabble-worthy combinations,
random as my child’s passions. You might be
sitting in sugar-fame-gallop or cat-splendor-needle.
From this square of museum carpet, the world
sparkles. I squint through a scrim of threads, watch
colors unspool, a landscape awash in red sequins.
No meaning to divine, only warmth. Red tent, an ancient
home, supple grains plucked from the harvest. And always,
maternal specters. Cast in viridian green, they haunt me.
But to see into, to suss out—isn’t that the goal of looking?
I, an eye, beholds. Simple. No gazing upon something.
This being,
something else.
Charlotte M. Friedman is a writer, teacher and artist who grew up in Seattle and now lives in Princeton, New Jersey. She has taught Narrative Medicine at Barnard College for many years, as well as writing workshops in the United States and Israel. Her poetry has been published in journals such as Connecticut River Review, Intima, Unearthed, Waterwheel Review, The Maine Review, Nightingale & Sparrow and in the anthology, A 21st Century Plague: Poetry from a Pandemic.Her first book, The Girl Pages, was published by Hyperion.
Alex Nodopaka originated in Kiyv, Ukraine. Speaks San Franciscan, Parisian, Kievan, Madridian & Muscovite. Mumbles in English & sings in tongues with Vodka. Studied at the Ecole des Beaux Arts, Casablanca, Morocco. Full time author, visual artist in the USA but considers the past irrelevant and seeks new reincarnations.