“He he he he and he and he and and he and he

and he and and as and as he and as he and he.”

—Gertrude Stein, “If I Told Him,

A Completed Portrait of Picasso”

 

 

My dachshund Manet and her sister Monet

and my sweet chinchilla Kandinsky

and the gerbil Cézanne and my gecko

Gauguin and my budgie Marcel Duchamp

 

with my ferret Matisse, my tarantula Ernst,

the guinea pigs Pollock and Rothko, and Banksy

the dove, Andy Warhol the newt, my parakeets

Haring and Twombly, and my box turtle Jasper,

 

my calico Vince, my good pony Willem de Kooning

with my betta fish Jean-Michel Basquiat licking his fins

in the back of the rig with my bed and my couch

and my dumbbells and laudanum in our big hairy

 

truck on the A68 which churns like a sea between

manly Toulouse and little, medieval Lautrec.