On Visiting Moma, Jan. 19, 2013

Three exhibits: Inventing Abstraction, 1910-1925
                                              New Photography, 2012
                                              Edvard Munch: The Scream

"I transform myself into the zero of form, I destroyed
the ring of the horizon and escaped from the circle of things"
...Kazimir Malevich

All I could think about were people starving
as I walked thru this exhibit, some familiar names
others I didn't know and noting

the brush stroke vertical lines of
one artist, geometric shapes of another, didn't really matter;
a woman's face peaked out of the confusion
struggling to free herself, fails and
vanishes in the next artist's colorful swirl
that hit me like a sudden blow on the head...
lines and shapes began to disappear color fade;
I came to the end: everything was white
there was no where else to go
but black

                                   2.
it's 1970. A few men are about to be executed.
a life magazine photographer asks the executioners
to hold their fire until he takes his shot, then

turns away, never looks back
several shots ring out but
I only hear hisÉit is loud, unrelenting
                                    3.
like that scream pitched too high for words
like the sound zero makes
if you could hear it

                           Linda Lerner