I would visit China if I could come home tonight. -- Philip Larkin
Hand me that crayon, Liz,
and give me that magazine,
your painting's a blur, an oasis
phantasmically set in a scene
from Vogue, timeless music
from an empty orchestra
flat, dizzy, dyspeptic,
woozily indefinite -- one size,
however small, fitting all
celebrities like so many dainty gloves.
Whimsically your wall eyes
scan the pages for subjects
two-dimensional,
but tropically colored,
demure and low pressured,
pressed like a postage stamp
on a huge white wall,
ever elusive, precious, prized,
the watercolor in your watery eyes
drips into a tub full of honey.
Life is a cool breeze
where Liz lives it.
Who would want to leave?
Elizabeth Peyton, Apr. 17-May 11, 2004, at Gavin Brown's Enterprise, 620 Greenwich Street, New York, N.Y. 10014
CHARLIE FINCH is co-author of Most Art Sucks: Five Years of Coagula (Smart Art Press).
