3515. ALL THE RAIMENT MATTER

ALL THE 

RAIMENT MATTER

CINDY SHERMAN

I can't dissemble, seeing silent matter.

Art wears its feeble cloak in the face of

everything else : the owl strikes death at

midnight, the key to the tomb is lost at sea.

Alongside the busy highway, high above

Tonnelle, the great graveyard robs time of

its means and material. Egyptian graves,

styled so anyway, strange heads and shapes

and forms, the look of a Sphinx, the wings of

a dragon; all the twisted, broken tree, things

downed in any recent wind. This is truly some

land of the distant dead. And then there is she :

and there she is, wearing whatever she chooses 

to portray, a face-riding chimera, got to be close,

a movie-maven wearing but panties and a bra, a

dowager swimming in a steel moat, nothing at all,

but always something. 'I can fly out, unlike anything

you think you've seen before.' No, no, please now, save

me that catalyst, and let me escape. This land rolls down

the watery hill, draining deep death to the highway below.