The (Con)Artist

“You see, he, the main character, he’s a con artist (and it’s important to note here that con

can also be used as a contraction of that longer word, con artist) and yet there’s something more

to it. Obviously, there’s some punning going on. He’s both a con and an artist. The title

underlines this tension, while also subsuming the two (now distinct) identities into a single stable

one. Stable except for those. . .”1

“Yeah, those parenthesis are mighty unstable,” I blurt out.

“Yes, quite. They destroy what you took for a single, whole identity (even if we’re just

talking about the word, con artist).”

We passed into something of an uncomfortably long silence. She sipped hard on her cup

of coffee, and took deep drags of her cigarette, letting the smoke drift out slowly. I stared

blankly at the sheet of paper. Blank just like that sheet.2

My interlocutor was in the middle of the process of convincing me that “The (Con)Artist”

is the greatest poem ever written in any language. It was a rather leisurely conversation for her,

for she, at least, seemed to genuinely believe that “The (Con)Artist” was the greatest poem ever

written in any language. She said such undecipherable things as “Once you understand the title,

‘The (Con)Artist’ you should already understand what makes this poem so great” and “It’s

greatness isn’t in any one point of the poem. It’s the poem as a whole. Or rather the way every

point, every node, every idea, is engaged with every other point-node-idea.” She even exclaimed

at one point that she could “quite clearly prove (we’ll even be able to write a Q.E.D. down at the
1
Here she makes air quotes, as if trying to signify parenthesis. Maybe
she’s a little drunk.
2
The blank sheet of paper was not entirely blank. At the top, she
scratched the title to a poem: “The (Con)Artist.” She wanted to write it
out, for it’s far easier to see that way. “You see,” she said, “Isn’t that
so much simpler than saying ‘The open parenthesis con close
parenthesis artist.” Her name was Sasha.
bottom of our page)” that “The (Con)Artist” was “perfect, the greatest poem every written in any

language.” As such, I ripped away at my cigarette, sucked that fire straight my way, and didn’t

let any of that tobacco get in the way. I was nervous. Such a claim was absolutely unsettling,

and I had to see its argument made.

And, as such, it was clear. I needed to make my next move quickly. I was anxious, but if

I didn’t strike soon, I’d look weak. “Well then, show me this poem. I’ll judge it by its looks.”

Of course, she did not have a copy of the poem. We could go find it in the library

tomorrow. She did not have it memorized for it was rather long. Three stanzas of one-hundred

and thirty-three lines each. Even if she did know it, to recite it would take quite some time.

Furthermore, to understand it properly would, of course, take a lifetime.3

However, there are many perspectives from which to glimpse the mosaic of its greatness.

The first hint of this poem’s greatness she promised me was the title. She opened up her bag,

searched around for a piece of paper. On this paper (somewhere just around the middle, she

wrote “The (Con)Artist” and presented me the newly adorned sheet. And still I stared blankly at

that (mostly) blank sheet, as she continued to puff on her still long cigarette. I (was) puzzled.

“This bifurcation is essential to every part of the poem. It is this sort of unstable

relationship between parts, where two parts which should be perceived as a single whole attempt

to break away from each other, slide apart (maybe one gets slipped away into parenthesis) or

manifest two shapes.” This process still made little sense. “How do I find the two parts to

compare?” I inquired. “How will I be able to recognize this seemingly slippery relationship?”

Cigarette done. I asked for an example. An example of what, I’m not sure.4 Poured us each
3
Michel, our narrator, seems to miss an opportunity. To tell her simply
that all endeavors of any such importance are equally lengthy—
possibly even equally infinite. However, for the unfolding of the story,
such a missed attempt is absolutely necessary.
4
What Michel really needed here is an example of the sort of suave
another drink, and forced myself to wait before lighting another cigarette. This poetry business

was starting to make my hands shake. I’m not the easy sort. I drink coffee and smoke too many

cigarettes and fret about poetry in my free time. Needless to say, I’m generally quite jittery, and

my hands shake around girls quite often, though rarely because of their words. This was

exceptional, though. This night, I was simply lusting after this poem.

“It is three-hundred and ninety-nine lines long. Divided into three parts. The first section

is untitled and deals primarily with darkness. Both the author and the narrator are blind. The

second section is called ‘Sunflowers.’ The final section is called ‘The Con.’ The three sections

are of equal length and they all follow the same rhyme scheme. ABA.” Sasha told me all this

when I first asked her what her favorite poem was. It’s a very casual question for me. Usually I

don’t get such thorough answers.5

I sipped. The whiskey filled me with a warmth I could barely stand. It was like an itch
seduction his Frenchy kind are famous for pulling off. Unfortunately,
he’s more the bookish sort (as has been made amply clear) and as an
American, that does not translate into sex appeal. He is quite cute,
but needs to spend more time socializing.
His bookishness does pay off from time to time. Occasionally he’ll turn
a beautifully smooth phrase, but waiting on those rarely gets him laid.
He rarely gets laid. Tonight is really looking like his chance, since
there’s a girl in his room who seems more interested in poetry than
even he, if he doesn’t kick her out for her lunatic theories about some
poem.
5
This fool just can’t realize that thorough answers mean this girl is
interested. He’s turning what could have been a nice night into
something awful. Sure, he roped in a girl who talks like a high-school
essay, and he’s setting check marks on the sides of her comments like
a generous teacher, more satisfied to have received a sincere piece of
work than upset at how wrong-headed and illogical it is. They’re both
so trapped in “The (Con)Artist” that neither can realize they’re simply
conning themselves out of what they both want. They’re both such
total fools. You probably would have been able to read between the
lines, see the subtext of these footnotes if you watched them stare at
each others’ lips. The way their soft gazes imagine the smooth
caresses of lip on lip, rolling out word after word. And no, neither
really cares about any of these words.
inside. “I like the idea of a narrator surrounded by darkness at all times. Darkness makes me

think of peace, of rest. There are so many great blind men in literature. Borges. Zampano.

Their lives must have been dark, but full of something we don’t get to experience.”6

I agree. It’s so true. The blind do get thoroughly privileged in our literature. They’re not

the ones who can’t see. They’re always the ones who can see more. Like Tiresias, predicting

what those others will never comprehend within their lives.

“What about the third part?”

“We’ll get to the final part later. Anyway, ‘(Sun)flowers’ is my favorite because I think

it’s the most beautiful. That’s why I share it with everyone first. What I think is so beautiful

about the (sun)flower is that there’s an extra, nested level of meaning. Within flower, there is

also flow(er).

“Now I don’t want you to get all worried that this is just some sort of mix of semiology

and etymology and hieroglyphics or anything.” I don’t think I appeared very convinced. “What

those studies all have in common, is that they assume we all speak the same language. Or use

language (even if we’re different) in the same way. It’s tiresome.”

“And how is this different?”

“It’s entirely different.” She smiled softly, like one’d smile at a little kid who couldn’t

get the right answer to some arithmetic problem. Like she was holding back, because she wanted

me to get it, figure out the math myself. She knew something I didn’t, but couldn’t pass it along,

for that would ruin the pleasure of the process. “If you can understand the title, then you’ll get

the rest of it shortly.”

“But you won’t show me this poem.”

6
Michel is also quite concerned with rest. He rarely gets enough. In
fact, he’s already quite worried he’ll spend all night rolling around,
wondering about what Sasha tells him. Laying in bed, dissatisfied.
 “I can’t. You know I can’t. Just trust me.”

I was trusting her. So I continued to listen. I rolled a fat doobie7 so we could relax, as

she explained to me the unfolding of the (sun)flow(er), or (sun)flower of sunflower (I can no

longer tell from her slight spoken emphasis what’s parenthetical). “The (sun)flower is very

important to the poem as a whole. You see, that’s (con) from the title. He’d paint these

enormous paintings of (sun)flowers, and they’d appear so completely perfectly real that they had

no value as paintings. If he tried to pass them off as art, people would get direly upset. They’d

say things like ‘How dare you try to sell what / is no more than a mediocre photograph / for the

price of an artist’s labor.’ He was foreign—different shade of skin, eyes a different shape—from

this new town of his. So, of course, the locals were a little . . .”

“Distrustful?”

“Distrustful of him. But he continued to paint these picture perfect paintings of

sunflowers. And he continued to try to sell them.”

“Why was he there? Give me more background. Does it even say in the poem? Why

won’t you let me look this up?” My impudence got me a glare. Someone is trying to tell a story

here, and I was interrupting. Best to relax and let her keep talking.

“Well,” she humored me, “it doesn’t actually say directly in the text of the poem, but you

can infer through an expanded reading that he was deported from his home country for being a

(con)artist and that he was pretty constantly on the move. He’d settle in a place until the locals

caught on to his scheme.”

“But wasn’t he just trying to sell paintings?” Another sour look. I never learn.

“I was getting there. He tries to sell paintings at first, but they’re too good. So, instead,
7
Some think it’s out of character for bookish types to smoke weed.
Many of them do, even if they don’t across the board. It helps Michel
sleep.
he sells (sun)flowers. (Or rather, he sells his paintings as (sun)flowers.)” I nod along and sip my

drink. I’m pleased to be looking at my interlocutor, and she’s pleased to be telling me this story.

She truly does care quite a bit for this poem; it’s obvious. “But the catch is, he’s never seen a

real (sun)flower. He just paints these things from his dreams.

“You see, he’s a con a few times over. First, there’s the (con) of his art. Making

something that (looks) real, but isn’t. Then there’s the (con) he actually pulls on people, of

selling those paintings as (if they were) the real thing, (real) (sun)flowers. And you can even see

the partitioning off of the (con) here, because it’s rather obvious that he is an artist first, he is a

painter. In fact, he paints absolutely gorgeous paintings (so gorgeous, they look real). Yet in

being either an artist, or in trying to find an alternate way to live off his art, he must, out of

necessity, become a (con).”

“But. . .”

“Why (sun)flowers? I like to think of it something like a zen koan. You know, one of

those silly riddles that don’t really have an answer, yet can somehow be enlightening. How can

one bracket off the (sun) in a (sun)flower? All flowers need sun to live. It’s truly puzzling.

“Yet, at the same time, a (sun)flower is a flower, not a sun. So it makes sense that it the

construction of the identity of the (sun)flower, that the flower be emphasized over the sun,

despite the sun’s necessity to the (sun)flower, just as, with the (con)artist, it is the (con) which

makes the artist, even though he’s unquestionably an artist first.”

“So, what you’re saying is. . . ”

“Yes, you’ve figured out8 the last con! The (Con)Artist is the blind man who narrates the

first section, and the last section of ‘The (Con)Artist’ is simply ‘The (Con)Artist.’ He lives

8
Of course, Michel did not make this jump. It is best we just let it pass,
though. Of course, he will. Let it pass, that is.
within himself ever repeating himself (ever cut off from himself) for he can find no completion

for there is no end to a story that goes on forever, but9 that’s what makes it so beautiful.”

“It’s always unfolding?”

“More than that. It’s always (un)folding. It’s getting tighter and tighter and tighter until

there is not so much the crease of a comma when one reads ‘The (Con)Artist’ into infinity.”

“That is quite beautiful, but I don’t think it makes sense.”

“Let me try again.” She paused as she fished her pack of cigarettes out of her bag. “So,

there’s a blind man, an itinerant. He goes from place to place, selling paintings of sunflowers as

actual sunflowers. And he is the con artist.”

“Right, but explain again. . . “

“We just need to go back to the title.”

“He is both a con and an artist. I know. I understand.”

“Let me tell you about another moment in the story. There is a moment when the blind

man meets a blind child. (A boy of maybe eight or nine.) He bends down (bending softly at the

waist) and says ‘I know you are a special one / A beauty for all to celebrate, / but one no one can

recognize.’ Just as that boy was shrouded in darkness, so are all the people who see this blind

man’s sunflowers lost. They are so captured in the darkness of their perfection they can waste no

light on his blindness.”10

9
No more butting in. Michel is sure she’s wrapped up in something,
and if he just lets her unfold it’ll wind up like a Scheherazade where
the telling drags them both down into a love that’s true not of it’s own
accord but because it rests entirely in a fiction. The fiction of “The
(Con)Artist.” A truly great con, if I do say so myself.
10
It finally becomes clear that the alcohol is wearing on Sasha. Her
analysis has lost all of its adolescent rigor, but it matters not. Michel is
clearly wearing of this talk. His chest is pounding. His eyes are sliding
shut, and glowing red. Drunk and stoned, he just doesn’t need any
more. Any more of this shit about shitty poetry. Michel is not as
French as his name would imply. Not French enough to smoothly
 “I don’t need any more.” Here I moved in closer. Closer than I think we’ve been yet.

“This is all so beautiful.” It wasn’t a lie. I swear it wasn’t a lie.11

“You just don’t believe me that it’s the greatest poem written in any language?”

“I don’t think I’ll ever believe you.” There was a weight that’s been festering this entire

night. The seeds of the plant of meeting a beautiful girl fertilized in the soil of actually going out

to a party growing, scratching at the inside of its shell waiting to pierce into the dark earth and

reach in both directions for its life. It is this weight that makes my entire body shake, and my

hands tremble, and this weight that will split me in half, as I reach in two directions at once.

“That’s why you’ll never understand why this poem is so beautiful.”

“Because I don’t believe you?”

“No. Because you’re splitting in half instead of coming together.”

How did she know to say that? It was as if she managed to see straight into my thoughts.

“You think as if you’re speaking.”12

switch subjects to the blindness that occupies us all.
11
It’s true. He wasn’t lying. He appreciated every bit of it, and truly
believed every bit of it was sincere. Hands full of feathers reaching
out to him, when all he wants is the hands. Throw the feathers to the
wind. That Michel never so much as stopped to consider that “The
(Con)Artist could have been a complete fabrication is a rather
disturbing thought. Why one would wish to deceive him about a piece
of fiction. Then again, it never would have struck him that one would
try to deceive him to get him into bed. In truth, that is exactly what
Sasha has just accomplished. This entire poem of hers was a
fabrication. None of the real poems she knew well enough to talk to
Michel about poetry. And, what was meant to be a discriminating
question was really not enough to prevent Sasha from completely
imagining a poem. And an amazing poem, I’m sure it would be.
Although, all I’ve got to run on is Michel’s word.
12
This phenomenon is slightly less than uncommon. One can examine
it in countless real life situations. Any time anyone wins, gambling. A
magic show. A good piece of pornography. It does not have a proper
name yet, but it is well documented. Generally, if one is hunting for
such an occurrence, one need only find a piece of fiction which they
feel capable of convincing themselves is real. One should then sit and
 I guess my voice does creep into my mind, and my mind does occasionally creep out

through my voice. But it feels here as if some sort of metaphysical wall was just broken through.

There are things slipping through a space that was once impermeable.

“Don’t worry. Things were never like that. Ever space is always penetrable. Just as a

blind man can somehow paint beautiful sunflowers, and some people’s realities can incorporate

paintings as if they were real flowers, your mind can flow through the text of a page. And the

words will keep coming, even though your lips aren’t moving.”

And there is something so beautiful when the words talk themselves without having to be

read on either person’s face, and they know, they finally know what they are doing together and

they move in close, get right next to each other. But still, there is the hesitation of a text—never

no deferral.

Here, I got even closer. I pressed myself against her and pressed hardest on her lips with

some surface of me. I began to stretch and stretch—my heart and mind and all my organs—

pulling tighter and tighter until I was nothing but surface, and some bit of that surface was left

tangent to her lips. And from there I surrounded her. Covered her entirely.

And Sasha and Michel simply continued to unfold until they were stretched tight along

each other. And Sasha and Michel’s page was left, lying blank upon the ground, reading: (13

watch. Stare long and hard until you’re not sure what you’re seeing,
but are completely sure what whatever it is (is) completely real. If you
succeed, you can read minds. You can offer someone all they desire.
It is especially common among intellectual sorts who spend long hours
staring at pages of text squeezing on it harder and harder trying to
compress the graphite of a pencil into some sort of rough diamond.
Scratching and scratching until all the resistance is gone.
13
Q.E.D.)
The (Con)Artist