July 13, 1946
        O'Keeffe [New York, NY]

It is difficult on Sundays
in summertime New York.
Heat rains down with nowhere

to go, bounces between buildings,
bringing the air to boil. People, too,
rush from point to point, a daily race

toward stasis. For once, I fall in line.
The roads creep with yellow and black
cars, mine among them. Called east

four days ago, I am ghosted
by desert. All down Madison Avenue,
the long drop to Santa Fe. I watch

the mountains transform—silhouette
stage sets when backlit by sunset,
unreadable palm in the early morning

fog, cupping the city—always there,
though, no matter the changing
light. Past the great museums,

whose walls I covered with a luminous
gray, which made each painting float
free of its frame. Alfred understood

such context mattered, how
presentation guides the eye, coaxing
the obdurate mule of the mind.

It is difficult on Saturdays
in summertime New York to find
a pine coffin. But I did, and stayed

up all night, ripping the seams
of its pink satin interior, relining it
with white linen. I ride beside it

now, a hand on the sun-lacquered lid.

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Copyright © 2014 Jessica Jacobs All rights reserved
from Iron Horse Literary Review
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission