She
slept in the backseat. Family vacation
after all. Other people
described the accident;
oncoming car, decline, her husband’s
forehead
against the steering wheel, frozen
hands—
his hands—gripped, small
pyramids of windshield glass
raised from them; her son, legs
twisted and trapped
beneath the dash, dangling from
the waist up
in nearby shrubbery, head
bleeding on a rock.
And
she didn’t wake
until waking,
wakened, awake, she stands
in the museum, five years
later, broken leg
and arm long healed, spirit
still on crutches,
studying Duchamp’s cubist
masterpiece of graceful
mania, determined to take up
where she
and her husband left off: the nude is a woman,
performing—a gestation ritual, that’s
right;
she’s
descending a staircase in lightning strides,
in
sweeps, even gusts of fauvist browns
because
she has a mind
to give birth to the dead.
The nude
scurries from the base of the
stairs, to the couch,
studies photos of husband, son,
until their naked souls
effloresce in her doorway. Then she
bellows
genuine delight in madness grief
breeds,
throws back head and hooded eyes,
slaps thighs,
spreads legs wide open like a
woman in travail.
Damming
her tears, she thinks, not on spirits,
but on their flesh she will
belt right out of her womb—
only day breaks on her breasts.
And
she wakes,
standing here, five years later,
before Duchamp’s portrayal of
suffering
only she could know—
How could he know?
What’s that? another museum patron
asks. She never turns her eyes
from the painting,
puts ear phones on:
Duchamp
creates the symbolic painting, a forceful style of Cubism comparable to
Futurism, in which the image of successive motions of the body represents great
emotional distress. . .
How could he know?
she fights through the first
tears.
Olga Dugan's poems have appeared in Scribble, The Orange Room Review, Obscurity
Zine, and other little literary magazines. Olga’s
plays have been produced on professional and community stages and her essays on literature,
composition, and women’s artistic communities
have been published in journals and books. Olga’s aesthetic and
academic awards include the 2006 Maryland Writers Association
Short Works Contest Prize and the 2008 National Lindback
Award for Distinguished Teaching. Olga received a Ph.D. in English Literature
from the