​Themes w/ Variations, by David P. Miller

​Themes w/ Variations

after paintings by Philip Guston
 
White sheet: conehead w/ Frankenstein’s monster stitching. Vertical eye-slits. A head under this mutated Klan shroud. Painting red-handed: that is, big red hand w/ paintbrush at canvas. Picture inside the picture: incomplete self-portrait of conical sheet, differently stitched, vertical slits. Three red dabs at bottom. Stout smoking stogie in the non-painting hand, in The Studio.
 
Variation 1. Three stitched headcones are Riding Around in a stubby black car. Three red hands, two w/ stogies twixt middle and index fingers. The third red index finger points right, out of frame, to where the car’s headed / at whom it’s aimed.
 
Variation 2. Two coneheads, hands w/ stogies, four slits, sit in a car like a black teacup carnival ride w/ steering wheel. Three boards stand up in the seats. One is spiked w/ nails, here at Edge of Town.
 
3rd. Two other headcones. Each faces the other. Torsos included, body sheets w/ random sutures. Red splashes stained in sheets for heads and bodies. One w/ arm bent back over the shoulder, dark flail in fist, aimed at the companion. Large empty bottles, window curtain drawn, naked ceiling bulb. Title: Bad Habits.
 
4. Flatlands, a cram of severed items.  Wood chunk spiked w/ nails.  Flexed ankle w/ foot and leg bone hole.  Two clocks (white w/ numbers, meat-colored w/out).  Two pant legs w/ shoe soles (nail holes).  Red hand (boxing glove?) pointing right.  Hovering white blocks. Half-sun rising (or setting) (or orange mound w/ black lines sticking out).  Red brick chimney top, woolly smoke.  Pink, red, orange splotches.  Other detached objects.  Two cone/Klan/clone heads mounted on mounds, w/ or w/out eyes behind slits.
 
Discussion Questions
 
Uses for stogies, cars, nails.
Distinguish body part from thing (ex. cone from head).
Holes vs. protuberances: why?
Compare and contrast: splotch, dab, slit, stain.
Identify represented habits.
Extremities: dressed or flayed? Options?

David P. Miller

David P. Miller’s collection, Bend in the Stair, was published by Lily Poetry Review Books in 2021. Sprawled Asleep was published by Nixes Mate Books in 2019. His poems have received Best of the Net and Pushcart nominations, and have appeared in Meat for Tea, Lily Poetry Review, Reed Magazine, About Place Journal, Solstice, Salamander, Tar River Poetry, SurVision, Vincent Brothers Review, and Nixes Mate Review, among other journals. His poems “Interview” and “And You” were included in an issue of Magma (UK) focused on teaching poetry to secondary school students. He is a member of Boston’s Jamaica Pond Poets.