Yesterday, hanging the gallery’s room:
I began with ‘Bordello Salon:’
a gauzy oil – thin blue,
salacious pinks.
Women, nude and bold.
Entry wall, solo.
“Charmy beckons!
Enter the bawdy!
Escape the cold!”
Next I hung pomegranates:
open, lush, exposing their
flamingly fertile flesh,
bright, full painted lips.
Thus she brushed her portraits.
Final task: hanging her
last self-portrait, alone
on the short, white, half wall.
There’s Em’lie in a chair.
Her face a mound of pinks –
no eyes, no mouth, no ears;
her thick paints webbed spidery –
paints cracked and crushed by years.
“Too ugly,” I did say,
“Why’d she paint it that way?”
Turned ’round and saw it hanging there:
her early self with brazen brown hair,
inviting hips, and firm bosoms bare,
fetching smile, rimmed in red,
opened robe on a chair.
Between these so many
years apart, what was lost?
her loves, her sons, her art?
Those years stole all beauty.
With my bra, now I stand
hitch and straighten before the mirror.
Just like hanging paintings
for show: alignment, fit, must be so.
Lipstick, enticing red, now to paint,
my lips – a shadow faint –
thin: no place to begin.
What’s her age in the first?
Really ninety one?
I’m also old
nearly spent,
nearly –
done.
I too once bared my breasts
for loves, my man, to touch
my son to take my milk.
Now? All
gone – wars and death
lost to the grasp of time.
My hair, once black and thick
now thin and grey and white.
My red paint stick, brassiere –
These? But
for whose delight?
Whose eyes?
There’s no one here.
Featureless fleshy face
stares back at me –
a picture
best kept
out of
view.
Ekphrasis
(A
verbal description of a piece of art, which itself could be imaginary.)
Mother, seated to my left.
We ate formally, unless
we were blessed
by my father’s absence.
On the wall, behind her
an impressionist landscape:
fields of corn and green;
a farm house in back
red tile roof, three birds
flying
black in a clouded sky.
But most important a mauve swath
with streaks of tan
(perhaps a road, perhaps heron)
starting lower right, sudden
swing left
through the field,
rising above it
past the farmhouse
to nowhere in the corner.
“Road” I say now, and some days then.
But I am not sure.
Often it seemed a heron.
I watched both over the years.
When father’s fists drew
blood, sister cried,
mother’s tears ran,
the heron would fly me away
and the road lead
to another world.
Serving
Tea in an 18th Century Miniature
Until paper turns to dust
I am my master’s tea servant.
He is off canvas – unseen.
I am but thin black lines.
Color has been given only to my shoes.
She who did not sign her name
drew my frame with
gay blooms and black vines.
They imprison me.
I shall protest my state.
To My Master
For centuries I have served you tea.
Never have I heard gratitude.
Rather, I am caught in servitude’s dark.
Miniaturized as one of Orient’s multitude,
a slave you command to serve your tea.
“No mess, girl!
Tread quietly!” you bark.
You see me but a cartoon without dignity.
After all these years you know not my name,
nor do you ever consider to set me free.
I shall protest once more!
To My Creator
You, with the power to create a universe
as God, have drawn me a slave –
yet pretend to art’s neutrality.
Giving color to flowers and now
I even envy
the lowly shoes on my feet.
You drew me bound and bland
to blend as ochre
into the paper
as if I,
a woman,
am to disappear –
Wall paper
for life’s passings by.
Where is my blade
to cut the heavy vines?
