lipstick

[RiverNotch]

lipstick

(shades of red colors beauty “it’s not for you it’s for me” smudges left on the rim of a cup the color of blushing blood and fruit her lips enthralling her lips)

Red blood red rosebud red smeared across her lips red scrubbed in red red red stunning red coating her lips in a kiss between   color and colorless       colorlessness    red like a ribbon to make her look like she’s dressed even when        she’s   not      her mouth fraught with red hot 

She’s red but not a siren red, it’s a fire red, the kind that you touch and jump back jack with black on your fingertipsburning red   turning red       flames oh so lovely you’d love to immerse yourself she asks “Do you hear yourself?” a blushing red is a nothing red she wears a bluffing red not a loving red, stunningred shovingred crushing red, red red Ms.red (please, 

don’t touch       the art)       “Beauty—

it’s not for you, it’s for me.” smudges left on the rim of a cup her lips enthralling her lips the color of blushing blood and fruit it’s not for you it’s not       asirenontherockslurein sailors red or a loving red merely a fire misread       her words useless mouth fruitless in regard to success do you hear yourself do you hear yourself do you       hear the       sound “please—don’t touch the art”             nonetheless       her lips are a kiss between cherry strawberry raspberry and       the fruitless

Perhaps I have not read enough Joyce (but God knows I'm trying --- and it's not that he's hard to read, in fact he's surprisingly easy to process, it's just that I'm a bad reader), but this ----- well, it definitely reads like poetry, and it definitely evoked the feelings of mad love you sought to express, but that's the thing: this expresses too much, communicates too little. And not too little in the sense that it has a one-track mind, which is not necessarily a bad thing in poetry, but that it has too little sophistication, grace, or even a plain stinger of a structure to fully work -- it's so close to being art, in fact from I'm guessing the artist's side it probably is art, but it's constructed too madly to be artful. Essentially, it's like glossolalia: it can be beautiful, and perhaps in the sense of mysticism or music it is artful, but it doesn't have the restraint, even the calculated madness, of art, and surely it's too messed up to be art in literature.

Of course, this isn't to say that you should scrap this altogether, just that this needs some good shears -- but for that, I'd recommend one of the higher levels of crit, for I feel I've said too much. Again, this undoubtedly moved me, but it didn't move me with the same subtlety, the same intelligence, even the same sympathy, as poetry -- although, again, perhaps I'm just inexperienced.

For a specific point, I just read too many damn reds. It reminded me of what Autobiography of Red could have been if instead of Anne Carson or Stesichoros the writer was just Geryon -- and instead of being written, the piece was simply collected. Again, it's beautiful, but it lacks grace, lacks it too unrestrainedly, too much. I mean, I get it that the speaker is emphasizing the quality "red", but there are enough images and not enough puns to justify that, and though it's evocative, it gets mighty tiring, having the damn word hammered -- for another metaphor, it's like having a great orator, say Adolf Hitler, giving you (in private) a Howard-Beale-sized tirade on the "round" shape of Eva Braun's breasts: it's beautiful, but, again, not enough craft to hold me. But at this point, I'm being the Network-Fuehrer; you get the picture.