Two Poems
by Ben Togut
Vertigo: Georgia O’Keeffe
At the museum where I learn
about your life, you paint
in the desert sun.
You never wanted
the flowers to be sexual.
Alfred sold you this way.
At last, he said,
a woman on paper.
Critics took in
your landscapes
bold flourishes of color
and saw only themselves.
Your genius a canvas
for their desires, their fantasies.
Once, a man told a boy
he should talk to me
because I looked submissive
reading in the corner.
Fifteen, I did not ask for meaning
to be thrust upon me,
femininity a spear
against my innocence.
Let a flower be a flower,
a boy exist nameless
in the space of his youth.
Let lust lie fallow. Let it
blossom on its own.
David Hockney, The Room Tarzana, 1967
Shadows divide
the room into blue
geometries. The boy sleeps
on his stomach, sunlight
falling across bare skin.
He enjoys the attention,
the thrill of being
lover and muse.
David watches.
Behind canvas, he traces
the impression Peter leaves
on the bed’s green linen,
his socks still on.
An afternoon elongates
into a lifetime.
They could stay forever
this way, the lover painting
the beloved, admiring
his creation. But it can’t be.
The painter will lose his novelty.
There will be other boys.
There is only this bed, this boy
lost in sleep, caught within a dream.
Ben Togut is a poet and singer-songwriter from New York City. His recent work is published or forthcoming in The Offing, Beloit Poetry Journal, The Cortland Review, and elsewhere. He recently graduated from Wesleyan University.