Duchamp claimed we love the frescoes for their cracks.
Let’s say the same for ceramics.

For voices.

A thin road crosses the Florentine bridge known for gold,
where a girl bought a braided bracelet

that failed decades later, Frost-wise.

Until the last gasp (Wilde’s wallpaper) 
who can say what will stay.

But small oil portraits may be tucked away, 
have a plausible survival rate:

give me an heiress in miniature,
I’ll give you a commission. 

Make of fragments a down-to-earth value—
Duchamp, calling himself “a breather.”

The Breeders struck a similar chord.

Come closer: note the crazing in the glaze. 

In the trick space of sleep
I found an earlier version of myself

might not have survived without suffrage.

Duchamp’s ex-wife suffered his chess obsession
until one night he found she’d glued

the pieces to the board.
The worst marriages make the best divorces.