Woman Muses, by Catherine Chiarella Domonkos

Woman 1, by Willem de Kooning (USA, b. Netherlands) 1950-1952

Woman Muses  
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I can’t understand your attraction to the Cedar Tavern, Billy. It’s a giant lizard shedding its skin with that awful green paint scrolling from its warped and water-damaged walls, dilapidated tables rocking on broken legs you all ignore while the whole damn place stinks of smoke, last week’s burgers, and a torrent of Abstract Expressionist testosterone. Any minute now that drunk Pollock is going to bash in someone’s head with an unhinged bathroom door or that unhinged Kerouac might pee in a sink or ashtray or worse. I wonder if this disorder is what you call abstract expression. Your radiant wife Elaine is the only woman at the table and the only true bohemian in the place, painting men - always men - and arguing for open marriage. And there you are quiet and brooding and beautiful amidst the mayhem while I stand at the bar, the plain one in the blue patent heels sipping a Coke, the blank canvas waiting to be drawn by you.

Catherine Chiarella Domonkos

Catherine Chiarella Domonkos is writer from Greenwich Village, NYC whose recent fiction appears in X-R-A-Y, The Citron Review, Litro and other literary places. It has been selected for Best Small Fictions.