Porcelain, mixed media, 2016

Poem courtesy of Debra Marquart

28” X 24” X 12”

Poor You

Back when we were still together, it seemed my ex-boyfriend could never lose anything. Car keys, dollar bills, everything that fell from his charmed pockets floated back.  Lucky us. Check books dropped in grocery store parking lots delivered to our front door by Good Samaritans before the ice cream melted.  Perhaps this is why he treated me with such benign neglect, forgetting how the slippery dime of me could work through the stitches of silk pockets. Once, at the therapist’s he handed the Kleenex box to me with this look on his face, like poor you, like I was some catastrophe under glass.  Oh, poor us.  It reminded me of a cartoon I’d seen in the paper of two men in a sinking canoe. The guy in the front end is submerged, taking in water, already drowning.  The guy in the back of the canoe is tipped high and dry.  In the caption, he’s thinking,

Boy, am I glad I wasn’t on that end of the boat.

© Debra Marquart