MY PAINTING ATTEMPTS CAME TO NOTHING.
I guess I thought it only took throwing some paint
on paper and dementedly daubing at it with a brush.
I can’t draw a figure, though. Human or otherwise.
But painters kept showing up, rolls under their arms,
fingers stained. My mother had once dated a painter.
Did I date painters? I was in a gallery,
paint dripping off me. This is fantastic, he said,
throwing himself at my feet and painting on the
gallery floor with his fingers. Back in my room,
he stretched, naked, far up the walls, to draw
distorted images in charcoal, twisted grins,
until his jaw cramped, he grabbed a bottle of whiskey
and guzzled, guzzled. He’d stagger between easels,
tear canvases chasing me, reaching for me.
I pushed him to catch my breath, and he fell.
He could turn anything to his advantage.
He’d overturned some paint onto a canvas as he fell,
leaving his imprint. When he sobered up,
he stretched the canvas, signed it and titled it:
Clash with Poetry. The other painter was even weirder.
He rolled me around his huge bed, both of us dripping;
he wanted to try everything. We coupled that whole summer,
ingesting ice cream and sperm, letting blood.
Come autumn he took me to a gallery,
to the opening of his show. There was a huge sign
over the door: My Boyfriend Wants It All the Time.
Inside it was packed with people staring at me.
And hanging on the walls behind them
were large white sheets with all sorts of stains, patterns.
All the bed sheets we had spent the entire summer
splattering with sex. I really had no luck with painting.
Brane Mozetič is a noted Slovenian poet, writer, translator, editor, and activist. English translations were published of his poetry books, Butterflies and Banalities, a collection of short stories, Passion, and a novel, Lost Story.
