ART HISTORY
JOSEPH GREEN
Christ, how many crucifixions do we need to see? How many severed heads? (Here’s St. John again, I catch myself saying aloud, or at least a piece of him on a platter.) Maybe Europe was always a dark place, even for the Enlightenment. Maybe we just cannot see ourselves in its trompe l’oeil mirror, or maybe it is water, after all, that runs thickest in us. But I have been holding back. I’m sorry. I have scrubbed out my cranium more than once and started over. Still, I’m always getting it wrong: my daughter used to live in the same building where a friend of mine needled himself to death. My father gave me the ring he’d worn for more than sixty years, but it barely fits my smallest finger. In the end he wouldn’t eat in my house because all my chairs were uncomfortable.
38