At a gallery in SoHo, a large screen TV beams
a live feed of an operating room in Midtown
where the artist’s face will be surgically altered
to give her the Mona Lisa’s big brow.
She once displayed her menstruating genitals:
gaping hole in a sheet framed by an embroidery hoop
highlighting her sex which was held open with clips.
as the public paraded past the bleeding orifice,
a camera recorded their reactions.
That was the art–their reactions.
Cater waiters with silver trays serve champagne
and morning glories. Members of the press trickle in.
Kaity Tong, anchor of the WPIX eleven o’clock
Homicide report, takes the seat next to mine.
The doctor drives a needle deep into the artist’s scalp.
She’s soon slicing away, separating flesh from skull
to make way for the Mona implant. Blood spills,
then spreads–a scarlet Rorschach on the surgical sheet.
Someone vomits their morning glory.
Several walk out. Kaity buries her head
in my jacket, her ruby lipstick staining my lapel.
I can’t stop staring at the screen–a woman
bleeding for her art. Suddenly,
it was as if I were being cup open–my head
spilling everything in it, in all its unspeakable horror,
a voice crying, red, red, red.