Fourth of Five
Two Page Openings from
The Way We Live
by Burt Kimmelman  

Domestic Cutting board, knife, bread crumbs in dawn light — she stood and ate beside the kitchen sink, then got back into bed.	..	At a Willem de Kooning Show with Michael Heller Pace Gallery on Fifty-Seventh Street, New York City, May 2011             Not a declaration which is truth             But a thing             Which is. It is the business of the poet             "To suffer the things of the world             And to speak them and himself out."                         — George Oppen Broad swirling brush strokes crossing the canvas, their edges fade in thinned-out paint and Mike talks about how the bright yellow leaks out of the light blue laid on slightly thicker while I, from over his shoulder, try seeing what he sees — twisted figures the colors make most of all, what the artist saw as his quandary, since what else might have been the point? We drop back onto the street and look into the drizzle before stepping on, the wild spring among tall buildings that sound the buses, trucks, taxicabs bellying along the wet swath of dark asphalt in their commerce — not unlike, really, "the business of the poet."