Three Arts
fiction by Joseph Riipi
Reach
Take the poet’s hands cast in bronze. Mount them high atop an obelisk, perched before Mediterranean cliffside sky. (Paint this). Write the story of the young woman just appearing, hair and yellow hat windblown to the sea. Watch how carefully she approaches, threading her way across the wildgrass and canvas. See her pleas as she reaches up with both hands, up and up and up, and never reaches. This book will be the story of your life in verse.
Free
Break a window. Sculpt the shards with glue and bare hands. Smell the new breeze. Shiver. Open your eyes. Watch what happens when the rain starts. Shape your red umbrella and cower, sing. This is sculpture, performance art, theater. Fiction as the real vice and versa.
Believe
Invent your new religion. Name it like a porn from childhood. Fluffy Bedford. Spot MacDougal. Tiger 23rd. Write the illuminated manuscripts of Tiger 23rd in composition notebooks, on napkins. Establish “sin” as synomic with “art,” make your signature a sign of the cross. When your family comes after you spitting curse and blaspheme, enjoy. Let them stone you, climb their crosses smiling. Play dead and rise.
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Joseph Riippi