My Turn
March/April 2015
Judy Robbins
A Sunday Morning in New York
PictureDiane Arbus_Young Couple on an Outing_


























A SUNDAY MORNING IN NEW YORK

(From Young Couple on a Sunday Outing photograph by Diane Arbus)

The colors of your royalty
have burned to black, white,
and the grey shadows of your steps
down the cindered stairs of New York.
That's New York incense wafting
through the black hairs of your brows.
The golden prow of a barge,
flowing with purple silk, does not glide
the cold, brown Hudson but you will anchor
the small, white hands of your heir,
litte Pharoah of the streets.
Cleopatra, draped in leopard,
with her Caesar on a Sunday morning.
You have turned your faces
to that quick, black eye
for a thousand years of dignity, for what you wish
to be or will never be.
Here we see your life on glossy paper,
monuments of royal lips
and skyward bouffant hair.


Picture







Judy Robbins is a Tucson-based visual artist and writer.