BLEEDTHROUGH

Linda Gregerson

(Helen Frankenthaler, 1969)

                      I.

As when, in bright daylight, she closes
              her eyes
     but doesn't turn her face away,

or-this is more like it-closes her eyes
              in order
     to take the brightness in,

and the sun-struck coursing of blood through the
              lids
     becomes an exorbitant field to which

there is
              no outside,
      this first plague of being-in-place, this stain

of chemical proneness, leaves so little
              room
      for argument. You'd think

the natural ground of seeing when we see
              no object
      but the self were rage.

                       2.

My daughter has a trick now of composing
               her face
      and her shoulders and arms in a terrible be-


seeching shape-it all
              takes just
     the blink of an eye-I love

you, Mama, she says, I like
              this food,
     it's good, it's fine, I

can't even taste the burnt part, and she means
              Don't rain
      down fire again. She's nine.

And every penitent reparation-Do you like
              me, reader?
      Do you like me sorry now?-ensnares

her more and makes her shoulder
              more
      of this im-

partible estate. It seemed like
              Mars
      to me when I was young, that other

                       3.

world of women with its four fleshed walls
              of love.
      My mother, who can turn the most un-

likely raw materials to gladness, used
              to call
      her monthly blood "the curse." I

know, I know, our arsenal of pills
              is new,
      our tampons and detergents, all

our euphemizing gear; the body
              in even its
     flourishing seethes and cramps. When the

painter, for example, looks for
              leverage
     on a metaphor, nine-

tenths of her labor is in-the-flesh. The wash
              of acrylic,
     the retinal flare: we say

that the surfeited pigment "bleeds." And
              every
      counter-argument-the margin of shoreline,

the margin of black, the four-
              fold
      margin she's stretched the canvas to com-

prehend-undoes itself a little in its straining after
              emphasis.
      I can tell, says my daughter, the difference between

                           4.

the morning light and light at the end
              of the day.
      And from room to room in the crowded

museum she blazons her facility. That's night. That's
              not. That's
      Sunset Corner, says the plaque. As though

the vaults of fire had found their
              boundary
      in an act of wit, or California's amplitude


in glib suburban pavement. Or have I
              missed
     the point again? Out-

flanking the painter's luxuriant brushwork
              (maybe
      I've loved this grief too well) is

something more quotidian and harder
              won.
      The fretted cloth on the third or fourth rinsing goes

yellow, goes brown, the young
              girl's hands
       -she's just pubescent-ache

with cold. Some parts-
              the red's
      bare memory now-were never bad. The sound

of the water, for instance, the smell,
              the rim
      of the stain that's last to go.