i.m. James Tate

The Critical Pilgrims

                                             
                                                                                 for Jim Tate

I want the barbarism that is for me a rejuvenation

— Gaugin, in a letter to Strindberg, Feb.5, 1895

My fiancée had long been fascinated with the space left by hanging frames and was in her element sniffing the blanched lines beneath a clock face. It was hard-going getting there

before we could arrive as usual and then only to be sprayed by

a group of flushed guests who looked like they should be

painted wearing official tags made from whale skin.

One upwardly-mobile male with goffered wrists grabbed me by the arm and introduced me to his widowed au pair. She was wearing the kind of window dress one remembers quite well

from Worthing’s red-light district. “We’ve had quite enough of that young man,” she spat, with the nodding smile, responding to my puzzled glance toward the charming Bohemians

creating obscene images from caviar.

Startled by peals of laughter from the living room I turned in time to see Irene pirouette over a root stain where the portrait of a young Bolshevik troubadour used to be, much to the delight of our hosts, the critical pilgrims. And so they had me show the pictures I have had to carry about my person since puberty, with the same nodding smile sparked this one wild time by sucking profoundly on marshmallows dipped in their martinis.

“That was one of my classmates just went in there,” I gasped to the remaining passion plant. I’d kept one eye with her,

out of Irene’s way, all night. Ah, she was beautiful in that prospect, draped seductively over the bowl in a topos birthed by

a preMannerist memento mori. Dropping punches

with unexpected abandon.

If there was still some semblance of a queue for the bathroom I found the circulation of laminated World War I drafts enough to dissuade us from going in. And besides, they tore down this little scene we were painting, having decided it would clash with the lobsters reading their history books on blue tiles.

I think you’ll understand quite well when I tell you I have had

a hard job convincing others I have been the centre of similar parties. Irene has a habit of destroying every image we can purchase that seems close to capturing my feeling for a time

when anything crass would do. When one could finish one’s tequila before our intended came back wearing nothing

but a pilgrim’s chap stick.