Duchamp claimed we love the frescoes for their cracks.
Let’s say the same for ceramics.
For voices.
A thin road crosses the Florentine bridge known for gold,
where a girl bought a braided bracelet
that failed decades later, Frost-wise.
Until the last gasp (Wilde’s wallpaper)
who can say what will stay.
But small oil portraits may be tucked away,
have a plausible survival rate:
give me an heiress in miniature,
I’ll give you a commission.
Make of fragments a down-to-earth value—
Duchamp, calling himself “a breather.”
The Breeders struck a similar chord.
Come closer: note the crazing in the glaze.
In the trick space of sleep
I found an earlier version of myself
might not have survived without suffrage.
Duchamp’s ex-wife suffered his chess obsession
until one night he found she’d glued
the pieces to the board.
The worst marriages make the best divorces.