Learning to walk at Aunt Berthe’s house in Switzerland.
My parents, Ferdinand and Renée.
Me and Edgar, four years apart.
College graduation photo, University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
At the governor’s desk with Edgar.
End of 3rd term photo.
Greeting a little girl.
President Reagan and First Lady Nancy.
Campaigning with Geraldine Ferraro, 1984, Burlington.
With the First Lady and President Bush.
Me and Hillary at Davos, Switzerland.
Department of Education visiting kindergarten.
Throwing out the first ball on Vermont Day at Fenway, Boston.
The Family: Peter, Adam, Daniel, Arthur, and Julia.
At the Women’s March in Montpelier.
With the Emerge Vermont class of 2018.
I AM MULTIPLESThe dancer’s
elastic poses
stretch my legs
high and wide
air up, I fall
on his raised hand
as if nothing
had happened.
The opera singer sways
my sucking ribs.
Her high octaves
tremble my bones
and wrinkle my throat
as I spill
gallons of sound
all over myself.
I’m on the tennis court
with someone else’s arm,
Venus or Serena?
every quick command
from head to foot.
Look.
Just inside the line
by half an inch,
the camera assents.
The cello is settled between
bent legs, and curved arms
leaving fingers free to run
up and down, in
pursuit of fleeing notes
that I gulp down
into a thick, low sound
that feels good inside.
I abscond with the poet’s words
and claim them for my own.
Or were they mine,
in the beginning?
I mouth them
with tongue and teeth,
and spit them in your face.
wish to say,
leading me from
room to room in her house,
which seems eerily familiar.
She lived there once.
Chisel, brush, pen
bare faced, fully awake
ready for action.
Move, they say, like
we did, and make a mark.
I do, asking Monet, Manet
and ninety-year-old Picasso
to leave me a space.
I am multiples
and I am none.
It is late,
it is done.