Women Telling Lies: Drowning Girl By Roy Lichtenstein, Woman Ironing By Picasso Poem by Dennis Ryan

Wednesday morning, April 9, 2014; revised Wednesday morning, October 19, 2016

'I don't care! I'd rather sink—than call Brad for help.'
- a woman speaking in Roy Lichtenstein's DROWNING GIRL (1963) , Museum of Modern Art, New York (Also known as Secret Hearts, oil and synthetic polymer paint on canvas... utilizing conventions of comic book art.)

'For years conservators and art historians have known that hidden beneath the surface of 'Woman Ironing', long considered an example of his Blue Period, is the upside-down ghost of another painting—'
- Carol Vogel, 'Under One Picasso, Another', New York Times, Art & Design Section, October 24, 2012

'Now the current's only pullin' me down.It's getting harder to breathe.
It won't be too long and I'll be goin' under. Can you save me from this? '
- Three Doors Down, 'It's Not My Time', You Tube music video

Later, I realized she was lying—
I thought about how I know her,
how she talks, what she had said,
and then knew instantly she had lied
to protect herself, a secret, to gain some
advantage. I don't like thinking about this,
about how well she lies, has lied so often.
I'm okay with these most recent ones I guess;
I just can't get my mind off the drowning girl—
the one in the Australian film, in Shakespeare,
and in the cartoon, the painting by Roy Lichtenstein.
They say it's not best policy to lie continuously.
I gave her a copy of a study by Picasso—
'Woman Ironing'—1904—the woman dressed
in faded grey. She could have been Lithuanian,
Pole, Ukrainian, Czech, Slovakian, Russian, a woman slaving
at home in the coal mining towns of eastern Pennsylvania
in the 1950's—Mount Carmel, Shamokin, Shenandoah,
others—while their husbands slaved away in the coal mines,
my great uncles dying early of Black Lung there,
the towns looking Eastern European, all the homes built
tall and close together. What separates the woman ironing
from the women drowning—from her, and her, and her?
Nothing, absolutely nothing save chance, the accident of birth—and lies. Lies. Like those you tell. You can always count on...
Look at these few photographs of my grandmother
as a girl, growing up in Mount Carmel, Pennsylvania,
speaking Polish and Lithuanian in her neighborhood
with family and friends, smiling in the photos. No,
she is not you. You know nothing of her life, mine...
Still, you... lie so well. Ačiū. Your pretenses are...
Tell me a little more, this time in your native tongue—
lead me to believe as you take me into your country.