The
Gallery
On
Halloween day my class comes here to look back at
Lined faces of dated grief
Stare out from
large glossy portraits
on the white gallery wall.
In this school of young privilege
Even I choose
One image of a faceless gesture
a disembodied arm extended in
ExplanationRationalizationSupplication
The faces
too hard to look at
Too many
people suffering too many places
Witnessed by a photograph of
ANA MARIE BARNAVALLE’s mascaraed face
made up for some an event
a life in absentia
her name printed on the picture
Picture pinned to her mother’s floral print jacket
The bright clothes of old women who grieve
The
dark clothes of my students dressing for Halloween
Who I’ve
asked to pay attention to their own attention
Another
meta moment of our increasing italicized lives
women who grieve their lost men
lost sons or husbands
and this particular daughter
who looks out through dark, knowing eyes
30,000 desparacitos
drugged, imprisioned, killed, dropped from planes.
Really? That’s a new one
I
think, retreating to hipster irony
Henry
Kissinger had secretly given
American
approval
to
Argentina's new military rulers.
Says
Wikipedia
But of
course he had
The old
bastard always riding well above
war crime tribunals
The responsible disembodied hand testifies to the
stoic portrait of the long dead woman
while her mother takes down notes
a faceless recording angel
the women who listen and grieve
who always listen and grieve
the men (and women) they’ve lost
at the hands of other men
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