POEM & PICTURE

by Cecily Iddings (poem) and Daria Tavoularis (picture)

LIVING ROOM

In the carpet
is a story, man buys camel,
camel walks, camel walks,
and several geometric proofs.

The door is alarmed!
But the window has a
vacant sign:
upstairs room,
shelf, cabinet, lock,
fair rent.

In the living room,
an armchair where
one child sits,
seriously unappealing,
wanting

to scotchtape over every line
to save every word,
to give itself more glare.
It’s lonely for

a mother who isn’t anywhere
at home. Who accounts
for the desert with a calculator
that records amounts
in and out printing a list
that goes on, on, on,

that stops, turns a corner,
greets the isosceles
where the poker rests,
shelters the floor, meets the door,
tells the child, well
one thing’s sure.

UTOPIA WITH ANCESTORS AND SAINT

The descendants wear black and the saint

wears fur and gold. There are several
sirs and Anne who married John sits once

nosing the vase and once behind herself,
in a painting, older. The clock measures

nothing no place with inaccurate precision
in the impossible room. Later, lesser,

I’m the feral sister and the homebody both,
in Trafalgar Square with the fester birds

and undone and poor. The namesake counts.
Her father’s favorite points: If it were permitted me

to change my Fate according to my will…
It’s raining, ordinarily. My traits aren’t original,

but they’re hardly inherited. With everything before
me bending into the frame, I will myself a more.

THE RELIEF OF THE EAGLE-HEADED GENIUS

Why, you might ask, is the eagle-headed genius
here in America and, specifically, in the college’s collection

and, furthermore, carrying a bucket of semen?

You might try to touch the genius,

but security would tell you no, nicely,
because although the genius is here for you,
he is to be unmolested.

The eagle-headed genius
fertilizes a sunflower.

No, a foreign flower like a sunflower,
but not very. The genius fits in badly.

Nearby a cycladic figure holds her stomach,
and throughout the ancient cell, objects seem
to settle in, or pray, or languish.

The city of the eagle-headed genius is far away
and dead, unfortunately.

Dead, too, is Dr. Henry John Lobdell,
class of 1849, who donated the genius.

You might want to photograph
the eagle-headed genius or the story
etched around his beak and wings.

That’s allowed.
You might want to excavate
Dr. Henry and display what remains,
you might be curious, his historical
knuckle-bone, his place in the world,

the majesty of burial, you might wonder
what he wondered, you might wish

to save him from his ground.

Daria Tavoularis. Living Room, 2007, 24 x 19 in, pen and ink on paper. Courtesy of the artist.

Daria Tavoularis. More, 2007, 9 x 8 in, pen and ink on paper. Courtesy of the artist.

Daria Tavoularis, Crow. 2006, 12 x 16 in, pen and ink on paper. Courtesy of the artist.

BIOS

Daria Tavoularis is co-editor of Article. She studied at Montessori and Catholic schools in Oakland and art schools in Minneapolis, in New York at the Cooper Union and in Vancouver. She has lived in the Philippines, the US, Canada and the People's Republic of China. Daria writes and makes paintings, drawings, sculptures, comics and collaborations. She teaches art and yoga in Carson City, Nevada.

www.dariatavoularis.com

Cecily Iddings received an MA from the University of Georgia and
currently studies poetry in the University of Massachusetts' MFA program.
She is the managing editor for Slope Editions (www.slopeeditions.org). Her
poems and reviews have appeared in Harvard Review, jubilat, Meridian,
Pleiades, Verse, and Verse Daily, among other places, and new poems are
forthcoming in Spinning Jenny.

www.slopeeditions.org