Tamar Yoseloff: Two Poems

Tamar Yoseloff

Tamar Yoseloff was born in the US in 1965. She is the author of three previous poetry collections, including Fetch (Salt, 2007). She is also the author of Marks (Pratt Contemporary Art, 2007), a collaborative book with the artist Linda Karshan, and the editor of A Room to Live In: A Kettle's Yard Anthology (Salt, 2007). She lives in London, where she is a freelance tutor in creative writing. Here latest book is The city with horns (Salt 2011).

The city with horns

like the steer he claimed he lassoed out West,
all ten-gallon hat and heft, hugging the bar at the Cedar,

like a bull, great bulk of the Minotaur,
naked and erect, Europa bowing at his feet;

the streets of Europe choked with blood and dust,
as he wakes in a sweat from a dream of death,

horny again, no broad brave enough to fuck him,
this beast of a man, a real artist, no bullshit,

like the sax at the Five Spot or some
Village dive, a diva with skin like coal,

like the angel choir, cabbies leaning on their horns
as he trumpets down the Bowery, just the guy

to wrestle this city to its knees, exciting
as all hell.

Death Car Girl

(the nickname given to Jackson Pollock's lover, Ruth Kligman, who survived the car crash that killed him)

I pulled myself up from the forest mattress,
one of those wailing women
of Picasso's that you loved, my mascara,
black bars down my face, the neck of my dress
torn wide, like your animal rage.

But I was safe, alive — to walk again
through New York streets, accepting the eyes
of men in well-cut suits and ties, potential lovers
beneath their clothes. You watched them
watching me — your jealousy pierced my skin.

I walk into the Cedar where their stares
cling to me like flies; I hear their whispers
rise to a shout: death car girl, death car girl,
loud enough to raise you for one
last drink. And she,

furious widow, who would tear my hair
from its roots, smash my bones,
weighs on me like the granite boulder
on your grave. I want to tell her,
if she would hear me out,

how it was: I was your Monroe,
your moll, your late model cream puff,
woman enough to make you happy
(your old clown face bloated with misery),
your rush, your thrill, your speed.

Written 2010. Part of a sequence of poems based on the life and work of the American abstract artist Jackson Pollock, published in the collection The City with Horns, from Salt Publishing in May 2011.