For Aaron Sheon Poem by Judith Vollmer

"Tiny hatches, if you make enough of them, make
an entire etching move,' you told us while we smoked
in the lit cave of your Tuesday 1-2:15. We scratched
our pens: dance & film posters, flyers to end the war.
In our famous jeans we slouched before your podium & slides weaving
the movements & the solo trips.
"He was lonely." "She had no patron."

"Scale extends us & reins us in,' you said of the strange Piranesis.
"Find the heart of a city by stepping in."
My alleys & arcades pressed onto the copperplate of my 20-year-old brain
fusing its hemispheres. I hitched to Colmar and found
the Isenheim Altarpiece, figures on the old panels aflame, then turned
my back on all religions because you'd shown us Goya's firing squad

& Daumier's gutters where people looked for water.
"Movement in a painting is important as Dante."
I've looked for Dante's houses, cafés, notebooks, & horse-stalls, & someone
always says Oh, you mean The Poet.
"The body doesn't make sense by itself,' you said, pointing the red-tip
wand at the chalky nudes of Ingres. If I am lonely

in any town whose museum
treasures its one Whistler or Bonnard, I stand before the image
hear your voice; my eyes
un-scroll, I lift
again like a hinge.