Jackson Pollock

I do not believe in forgiveness. 
You came all over me. You needed

my resistance, my hard flatness. I could have been
sail, catching invisible sea. Or tent:

here, take my shelter. Ouch, my synaptic 
cleft, my dopamine, dopamine. Cotton duck, linen—

I was Venetian. I lived in the 14th century.
Venus birthed on my wide thigh. Your smell 

hovers—humiliating. Sever my blankness. 
The two of us know, most closely, how to die. 

Number 1, Number 31, Full Fathom 5—now look at me! 
Like a rained-on clown smashed to the floor. 

Motion is a man dancing himself out of context.
You made me happy once. An enormous bird

taking a shit. I couldn’t be mad. Drip, drip. 
When you crashed I exacto-ed a way out. 

But now, when I look at myself, myself appears 
grotesque, painted over, thick with your insides.

Jenny Molberg (she/they)

Jenny Molberg is the author of three poetry collections, most recently The Court of No Record.

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Poet’s Note

My poem, “Jackson Pollock,” is part of a manuscript-in-progress that interrogates famous men in the visual arts and their talented partners and wives who have been overshadowed, silenced, or lost to history. Confronting systems of abuse and addiction in my own family history, these poems intend to queer ekphrasis, gazing back at patriarchal systems in the arts through the lens of women, queer love, or even, in this case, the violated body of the canvas as a sentient being.

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