PETER COVINO
Before my sister’s divorce, I imagined driving her
back to her previous life, across Nevada, Arizona…
stopping alongside a dirt road near San Antonio,
on the way to the Mannerist Art Exhibition.
Because I want a redemptive art:
Pontormo’s Deposition in Santa Felicità.
Because I understand how the Menendez brothers
must have felt, bullet holes of redemption;
and Susan Smith who made sure her boys
were securely strapped in seat belts before she drowned them—
Our own mother would have eaten us at birth
had she known how we’d turn out.
Give me Daniele da Volterra’s Crucifixion,
anything by Bronzino, or Vasari—
I phoned my oldest sister this evening, the one father
couldn’t get at when he lived away from us in Venezuela.
I wanted to tell her how this divorce was not news to me:
this was a clear case, with an antecedent.
I wanted to tell her clearly,
because we cannot always tell clearly.
I wanted to make her understand.
Because it’s love we want.