Celebrity Photograph
Conversation After Death:
Georgia O'Keeffe and Marilyn Monroe

"I am not interested in money.
I just want to be wonderful."  - Marilyn Monroe


MARILYN: So smooth the lips. Hands on hips we dance. Shall we write a poem
together, Georgia? No, I did not commit suicide. I was murdered.

GEORGIA: I am moist like a cactus. Why do they destroy us without keeping
one specimen at least?

MARILYN: No, you are soft like the red brown-petals you painted. You bend.
I love your hard hands. You were accessible and I was remote.

GEORGIA: A river floods around its source?

MARILYN: Are you asking me, darling, about fucking?

GEORGIA: No, I am playing the hips of the signs in the rings of the
plateau where the wind has no hollow sound.

MARILYN: Stop the abstractions. Once I kissed a boy and he ran away. I was
twelve.

GEORGIA: Stieglitz had hard eyes that softened clay. He kissed my hands
and we were quiet. Well, no, I was loud and he shook without sound.

MARILYN: Arthur Miller was bored except when he read my face and tits.

GEORGIA: I love men for their unattractive postures, but I ignore them
too.

MARILYN: Oh, sweet, there is no power in men -- just the thumbs and the
index and then the gush.

GEORGIA: Everything is not sexy.

MARILYN: No, everything pushes back from the ledge where I saw us crushed.

GEORGIA: I am you, darling.

MARILYN: No, I am the ruby vulva flower you drew upon my breasts.

GEORGIA: When I painted that Texas skull, I could not breathe. I thought
it would come alive.

MARILYN: Abstract words and tits. That is the poem, then.

GEORGIA: Hands and scratching on the inner thighs and its schemes.

MARILYN: No, it's that come we had together when we wrote and danced. I
was jealous of your perfect beauty. He made such beautiful photos of your
face and hands. You are more beautiful. They, them out there, see it.

GEORGIA: I must have been asleep. I do not remember any of it.

MARILYN: You're lucky. I remember too much. Did you know that if you dust
champagne with Seconal, you forget?

GEORGIA: You look as if you loved that distance.

MARILYN: What are you talking about?

GEORGIA: Out there. Do you see it? There is a curve. It bends back on us
as the universe averts our eyes.

MARILYN: What?

GEORGIA: Put your face next to mine. Who is more beautiful?

MARILYN: You are.

GEORGIA: That is comical.

MARILYN: No, really, let me have your strong hands. See how fragile I am.

GEORGIA: No, you are not. It is an illusion.

MARILYN: I am soft, fat, and I bounce.

GEORGIA: I am like old leather and the sand dries in my throat.

MARILYN: Create me.

GEORGIA: It is not that simple to fashion a new fable.

MARILYN: Every painting you started had a story that was hot like the
desert. We sweat.

GEORGIA: I saw the path behind the barn where you were taken as a child.

MARILYN: He raped Norma Jean. No, he fucked me. Mother never really cared.

GEORGIA: Darling, it was horrible. You divided. Can you feel? Do you love?
Has it changed?

MARILYN: When I kissed Arthur he tasted of old cigarettes, but when he
laughed, I felt the play bending around the edges of my nipples and I felt
taken. Joe loved me. I loved the legend. I cheated him.

GEORGIA: Here is the mark I put on you when I painted your memory. I added
more than anyone can measure.

MARILYN: I pushed you back. I will not accept what you gave without
excitement. I need to shake again.

GEORGIA: Shake with me. It is an earthquake when beauty and the landscape
are twisted as one variegated red flower out of a blue and violent heaven.

MARILYN: Joe's eyes were blue when he fucked me. They turned green when he
died.

GEORGIA: Here, let me paint yours. Let me.

MARILYN: You cannot.

GEORGIA: I did.

MARILYN: I did not give you permission.

GEORGIA: Yes, I know.

MARILYN: You will be famous for your hands, your mouth, and how you made
the shape of my cunt into a clasp as broken piece of sculpture that is
reconstructed.

GEORGIA: Here, this is the drawn line I want to shape.

MARILYN: Here is my breast. Do; make it into an unlimited bouquet.

GEORGIA: So smug we are.

MARILYN: No one can be more famous than you.

GEORGIA: Not even Mr. President?

MARILYN: He came too fast to do any good.

GEORGIA: Sex is not the only course.

MARILYN: I wish it wasn't.

GEORGIA: Paint this nipple.

MARILYN: I am not the artist; you are.

GEORGIA: Paint this sword.

MARILYN: Can I hold your hand while we walk along the rim of the Canyon?

GEORGIA: Please, don't look down.

MARILYN: I won't fall.

GEORGIA: Afterwards we can plan our return.

MARILYN: Where did we go?

GEORGIA: Inside where Athena laughs and Eros fakes it all.

MARILYN: I know all about that.

GEORGIA: You are the perfect illusion. That is what fame does.

MARILYN: They will talk about you when I have disintegrated with every
frame of every movie.

GEORGIA: I love the way you threw your head back and laughed.

MARILYN: I am glad.

GEORGIA: Yes, they have no idea how sad we were when we died. I made you
more famous than Warhol did.

MARILYN: When I was alive I never had the strength to love a woman this
way.

GEORGIA: When I died I saw the first sunrise even before Eden.

MARILYN: Here, this is the depth of my sex. Know it.

GEORGIA: I did. I marveled at it. I laugh. I am bewitched.

MARILYN: You make me giggle; you know that.

GEORGIA: It is strange to walk about the land and not breathe.

MARILYN: I am so hot. I am so turned on and I cannot feel what I know is
there.

GEORGIA: That is the illusion.

MARILYN: Fuck, no, my love; you are the hidden lines and I am invisible
next to your dancing.

GEORGIA: You think they care.

MARILYN: Them?

GEORGIA: Of course. They!

MARILYN: What do you think of me?

GEORGIA: I saw only one of your movies.

MARILYN: Which one?

GEORGIA: "Some Like it Hot."  I smiled all day.

MARILYN: I saw you at the Modern.

GEORGIA: To answer your question --

MARILYN: What question?

GEORGIA: What do you think of me?

MARILYN: I think I am drunk.

GEORGIA: I know I am.

*Previously Published in SAMSÄRA NUMBER 13 April 2003.