Christopher Cunningham

MR. ROBINSON AT THE ART MUSEUM

He is an artist of loneliness. He is
a watercolorist, skies are thin
and speckled with light. His loneliness

is Neo-Classical, every gesture
seems a pose, symbol of tragic virtue—
cold, pensive contrapposto. It paints itself

into tight scowls of wood grain, yellow kiss
of stamen tips, stillnesses of pears.
He is a landscape vanishing into

blue hills, a slack-sailed fishing boat at anchor,
stark on silver sea. His loneliness
is voluptuary, Venus waving in foam.

It is alien, a collection of shards,
flat canvas and flat palette, the dry truth
of yellowed newsprint and color blue.

His loneliness is all Romanesqueries,
capitals and grotesque whimsies. It is
Campbell’s soup, can stacked on can, red

on red, like every other loneliness.
Outside, it is night. He calls the stars their right
names, tracing his loneliness onto the sky,

the shape of a spoon he dips and refills, drinking.

MR. ROBINSON AT THE AIRPORT

Here is the man who takes his suitcases.
They are friends, friendly. They smile, exchanging
bags and tip and thank you. Here is the woman

who takes his ticket. She scans the screen before her,
knows the names of the people at whom he will smile
when he confuses their seatbelts with his,

who will apologize when they squeeze past him
to use the lavatory. She knows his numbers,
price and flight, time and gate and seat.

She tells him where to go. She knows that he
is going somewhere, and that makes him happy.
The woman from whom he buys The New York Times

and lemon poppy seed muffin and Starbucks coffee
has everything he wants. She takes his money
and gives him just the change that is his due.

Soon, at a time over which he has no control,
he will walk onto the plane and find the seat
that is meant for him, and smiling people

will bring him food to eat and icy beverages
to drink. Until then, he will sip his coffee
and do the crossword and watch as ponderous,

hopelessly burdened things lift and dissolve
into this blue and cloudless sky, this empty, empty sky.

MR. ROBINSON ON VACATION

He fears people he doesn’t know. Not because
he doesn’t know them, but because they don’t
know him: it takes so much effort to be yourself

when no one is there to help. When he leaves home
and goes to strange cities, where stoplights glow
in a different hue, and people’s eyes are dull

with unrecognition, he gets lost in himself,
wandering streets without street lights, paying cash
for things whose names he can’t pronounce to friends,

hanging on corners reading orange flyers
for preachers and rock bands. He doesn’t know
what to say when the waitress tells him the price

of his meal: he doesn’t know what voice to use,
there suddenly seem to be so many. He forgets
the way words should sound. One rolls onto his tongue,

it tastes wrong, so he swallows it. He trips
on curbs, and stairs perplex him. His arms
lose the hang of their swinging, his hands awkward

and vagrant as crows. He finds a bench in the park,
but the birds sing in an accent he’s never heard
before, and the trees all seem to know each other

in a way that makes him shift in his seat, re-tie
his shoes, check his fly. He glances up and catches
the eye of a child walking with her mother.

The look she gives him before she turns away
offers him a glimpse of himself that he
takes home and puts in a box beneath his bed,

a reminder of who he never wants to be.