BLACK RAY
Prinzenregentplatz 27, Monaco
April 30, 1945
Lee takes off her dirty boots
filled with Dachau’s mud
and gets in the Hitler’s bathtub
blending her polarized skin,
the golden powder of a surrealist muse
and a necklace of sea sponges,
with that still virgin water,
which seems to be waiting for an angel
after serving so long a cold demon
without gills, blood and sperm
enduring the awful perfume,
—like snake oil—
of its former owner.
Lee’s breast, turned into a living reef,
half submerged in that reddish foam,
is surrounded by eddies of memories
— and by the tongues of the dead
she saw in the concentration camp —
headed to her mind, so quickly.
Hundreds of photo shoots,
human fences, charred voices
and a patchwork of forgotten faces
floating in the river, near there
like a flexible armor encrusted with eyes.
Then a familiar face appear,
it’s him, Man Ray, the rider of the absurd
—he looks good wearing that tinfoil hat —
He shows her a wedding dress,
white, sewn with fishing nets,
and then a army uniform, black,
with golden teeth instead of buttons.
“You choose, princess”, he whispers
before vanishing like bath salts,
blue, melting around her thighs,
in that bathtub of the monster,
the same as any other.
She remembers the wounds
after a bath with him and leaving
him dripping wet on his own.
She dreams of painting him
black on black.
She stands to towel dry,
feeling dirty all over again,
marked with dark sludge,
like those faces at Dachau
that won’t wash away.