Boy Who Waits

His smile opens over a missing 

front tooth. Perhaps he’s eight, 

maybe nine. A gray wool cap 

hangs on his forehead, jacket 

buttoned, black.  He perches on 

the end of a planked bench and 

waits as instructed.  He holds 

his hand on a plaid red blanket 

draped across the bench -- is it 

his mother’s fringed shawl -- maybe, 

it is worn, it is dear.  He looks straight 

at Chagall as if posing one century 

ago in Paris, or was it Vitebsk?  

Morning sunrays warm the walls, the 

floor of a room that seems cozy, 

except the doors that are padlocked 

and the barren space -- lock, bench, 

cupboard, a dustpan, rose-colored jug 

stored high, out of his reach.  

Scarce color in this painting, the boy’s 

feet are on the floor.  No magic cows or 

smiling horse, no lovers float above. 

This was what the artist painted, nothing 

more about the boy.  Imagine him painted 

now -- would the lock be gone, the title new?

or would nothing change -- the boy sitting

idle, waiting as told, faint hues of 

red and rose -- still the village idiot.

© Marti Snell, 2015

Painting: “The Village Idiot” by Marc Chagall (1914-15)

 http://www.metmuseum.org/collection/the-collection-online/search/483517   

Painted in Paris but likely an image from his home near Vitebsk, Belarus - part of the Russian Empire. Oil and graphite on paper (49.5 x 37.8 cm). In the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

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Fugue for An Aging Grandmother

I’ve been meaning to paint you for years,

pictures stored on my phone from visits

at Christmas and weekends when the Texas

cousins visit. Your hair is more wisp than

fall now, and pixel’s impressionism can’t catch

the aura I haven’t mastered with a brush

yet either. Or how the skin of your hands

grew softer; 15 years ago you were taking

mine to cross streets. Now you don’t

remember my name but I still love the

weight of them. A body holds on too long,

but the mind in fugue is the loss. Where

do you remain in there? Musical interludes.

The burst of grapes eaten one. After another.

After the other. You haven’t known me in years

But I’ve known your smell from the beginning.

The remain of which, the refrain of which,

pulls me away from the slip of linseed and oil.

Maybe I’ll just grasp your fingers a little longer.

Put the brush away until I’ve memorized you.

Take one more picture. One more December.

One more canvas holding only the curve of a face.

Though, it wasn’t your body I was trying

to capture in the first place.  

© Sarah Fletcher, 2014

Grandmother of migratory family with sick baby
on Arizona Highway 87, south of Chandler
Photo from National Archives and Records Administration
via Wikimedia Commons

Lucretia ...after Rembrandt van Rijn’s painting

I.

I will tell you because

only you will understand:

Sextus had me first.

with me, he was silent;

he offered no threat,

did not fool me--

I just gave in.

gave in.

what do you call it, Lucretia?

surrender?

submission?

choice?

now we both know: there is no choice.

II.

there is a sense of self-betrayal,

a gasp in your chest

when you look at my bed;

the scent on your dress, always,

a handful of spit and sweat,

the tragic film of memory.

there is the fight to not remember

when you were younger,

when you fell asleep in the arms of God,

and he loved you more

than you will e v e r know again.

III.

here is how you work, Lucretia:

you lie

and you take it.

(but I took it, then I lied.)

like a good wife, you told your husband,

and your husband consoled you:

you did not sin because your body did not sin.

your body did not sin because your mind did not sin.

and your mind did not sin because

you did not feel pleasure.

(then pleasure must be sin)

IV.

let me tell you a secret:

some nights I dream about Sextus,

and I think I would like to love him.

I think I would like for him to love me.

here is another secret:

I wish he had kissed me.

did he kiss you, Lucretia?

I would rot with jealousy.

V.

what does sin feel like to you, Lucretia?

does it feel like pleasure?

or does it feel like guilt?

both and also something in between:

a void with anxiety

panging from within.

we’re supposed to be scared 

of these things, Lucretia:

the strong arms with the gentle hands

the breath in our ears on the verge of sleep

but to find solace,

we must find comfort.

VI.

comfort is the ghost I hold at night,

wanting, wishing it would hold me back.

fear is waking in damp sheets,

forgetting where I came from,

remembering where I am.

VII.

guilt was two weapons on the table before you:

silence and the knife

I admire you for choosing the latter, Lucretia,

because I chose the sharper,

though we both chose tools of strife.

now everything I have felt each night

you feel in this single moment

while I still have many nights left to go--

so dig that knife in hard, Lucretia

take it all in one blow

© Katherine Freeman, 2012

Rembrandt's Lucretia, 1666
Photo from Wikimedia Commons
Painting in the Minneapolis Institute of Arts

To a Young Girl (Inspired by Maureen)

I remember you…

The first time you learned to skate.

And when you skied your first slope,

I remember your determination.

Then when spring came

You raced home from school

To do your homework in a tree.

I see you on the highest branch.

In dresses, jeans and silver heels,

You become a mixed collage,

And when summer flowers return,

I remember each variety as I

    remember you.

© Shelly Sitzer, 2011

Photo of Shell's painting of her daughter Maureen