To experience beauty, truly

one must find one’s heart.

Reach fingers delicately

through the space between ribs

as though they were Venetian blinds.

Stroke the suspicious heart

the cold or green or unpractised heart

like the ears of a lost dog.

Who can say they have done this?

Some day i will think of Penelope

pull a thread, start the unravelling.

But for now i efface the lines of influence.

Bury them writhing deeply beneath snow.

If i have been enamoured

by the work of Vermeer’s forger, Van Meegeren

who will know.

I paint until my hands and heart are...

Rachel Ruysch, 1664-1750. Not exactly

a household name. Painter of bouquets, blossoms.

Most men wouldn’t touch the subject with a ten

foot pole.

Too feminine. Too mired in detail.

Great thoughts don’t waft from carnations, they said.

Perhaps she wanted to paint the bodies of gods

in white gauzy robes, damp, billowing.

An unsuitable subject for a woman.

She wanted to paint her own unsuitable body

the delicate rivers stretched into her belly

the purple tributaries on her ankles.

She wanted to paint life and death and love,

great tragedies, battle scenes, myths,

the terrible weakness of beauty,

a doe...

Before allowing me to marry my King Red, Red Rex,

my fire-haired love, Otto Modersohn

my father sent me to cooking school in Berlin.

Two months of blank canvas.

A person who has had a premonition

of her own young death

should read every sacrifice as a sign.

I refused to understand it

though i knew, of course, i knew.

I was a cage of finches

one for each day i was there.

Each morning i would awake

to find one bird in the bottom

lungs the size of stucco stones collapsed

cold, among the paper and droppings.

I was...

Fathma, let me whisper in your greying golden ear

my lovely pet, pretty lioness

i belong to you

as we lie here in the gillyflowers

and cow-chewed grass with grasshoppers.

Tell me how does an old woman find herself

at the edge of a forest with a lioness?

As a girl i would go to the butcher with mother

before she died when i was eleven

and i remember looking at hanging plucked chickens and geese.

In my mind i would paint their feathers back on

or work out the motion of a leg of lamb

piece a cow back...

The stickpin women come to look at us now:

me, my sister and our niece Louysa.

I can hear them draw their breath in

and their shiny lips open

as their noses move towards us discretely

towards the pink undertones of our painted flesh.

Sometimes i see stomach-tightening fear, self-loathing.

Sometimes their eyes shine

and they bite at their lower lips.

Always, their hands are clasped tightly

laced together behind their backs.

And this is how i am immortalised.

A naiad. My right arm stretched

around my lovely sister’s back

my left arm crooked through Louysa’s.

I am twisted and...

I was drowning before i reached the Tiber

water climbing the bones of my ribcage.

I was drowning before i stood

as i am now

the hem of my sanguine dress sipping

wandering in the river

my heels in mud

singing every crazy little song i know

under my breath

caught by the intricacies of reflection

sky, trees, dress, face

and the floating twigs and fluff.

Below the surface fish and frogs.

At the bottom untroubled stones.

I was made a monster

because no one would look at me.

Wouldn’t reach into the current

tangle their fingers in my green...

Hey, shrimp woman, peeled, de-veined.

Hey, octopus arms, hey, side-show girl.

Yeah, i’m talkin’ to you there

on that chaise lounge

you in the tasselled turban and bangles

you with the peacock feather fan

you lying there on Turkish blue and gold silk.

Hey, flower fingers, wax doll, cold statue, exotic

corpse.

Hey, race horse, alabaster giraffe, your back’s too long

you can’t even walk.

Hey, platypus, swan-lady, you funny snake, lazy

serpent.

Are you plural, you’re shaped like a big old S.

Part painting, part word.

Others have called you monster, hybrid but

i won’t.

My little plucked peacock,...

It began this way.

When he left Milan and was received here

in the Viennese court, spring of 1562,

i was simply the one assigned to clean his studio.

Empty of him

but full of a marvellous clutter —

wooden bowls and earthen bowls and china bowls

of fruit, twigs, moss, shells.

Until the first time

when i came at the end of the day

and he was there we didn’t speak though he stared at me

as though he could see me.

I did my best to be unobtrusive.

The second time, he said he was Arcimboldo,

Giuseppe Arcimboldo. And...

Having devoured many suppers

betrayed by each one of them

i have come to examine the patient’s history

its illustrious skin decaying, deciphering.

To see time and circumstance partake ofThe

Last Supper

peck away at the scene of betrayal.

It has been massaged with glues and fixatives

painted over by clumsy hands.

It has endured bomb blasts, wars, revolutions.

The black smoke of candles.

The dead skin dust of the faithful.

Once someone tried to pry it from the wall

assuming it was fresco

theorizing on properties of the flesh

without visiting the body, the head.

Failing removal, a...

In 1914, a woman, a suffragette

entered the National Gallery in London

a hatchet in her muff. In protest

she slashedThe Rokeby Venusby Velazquez.

Venus, goddess of beauty, goddess of love

recumbent on black taffeta

her back to us.

Near the centre of the painting is a mirror held

by Cupid.

In the reflection, her face is blurred, illegible.

Last autumn i stood in front of this painting.

The damage long since sewn up, effaced.

If you turn the canvas around

there would be so many stitches in a row

a tiny spine.

Who can blame Velazquez for...

If i weren’t so jittery

i’d begin with a standing ovation

clapping until my soft palms stung.

Hollering — sensational, brilliant, bravissimo.

If i weren’t so shaky, if my stomach wasn’t weeping

i’d ride in on a frothy wave

of ekphrastic exuberance.

Describe her blue-black hair, big red-lips smile,

her green gaping blouse, pirate earrings.

The dainty china cup with indecipherable fleurs

proffered on red fingernails

more or less eternally.

All this bordered by lemon-yellow and tomato-red.

If i weren’t so hepped up on mud, on joe

maybe i’d talk about John Berger

the space between word and picture.

The way...

If you were to see the words

woman in blue reading a letter

and you were unfamiliar with the Vermeer painting

what is conjured?

Her jacket is Madonna blue,

colour of sky after a divine exodus of billowy clouds.

Colour of truth, clarity.

Prisons walls are sometimes painted this shade of blue

so the captives remain serene.

The woman could be pregnant.

Immaculate conception.

Or, her jacket holds the memory of a distant

fashion sense.

The pearl is a symbol of the virgin, of light shining in

the darkness,

of perfection and also of love. It is the child in...

The end of a long winter

i write this beside French doors open to spring.

The painting he gave me over my desk

breeze on my bare feet

i meditate on god-sized fruit, pomegranates.

The philosophy of feng shui

flows from the thinking

that the stone pathways making up your life

are directly affected by your everyday surroundings.

To improve the quality of the pathway,

smoothness of the stones, the moss there

you must improve the space in which you live.

The poem is a house

and in its rooms we shove stained coffee tables,

spacious armoires, excessive buffets

we...

Did Willem Kalf’s wife say

look i have brought home this nautilus cup

filled with light

from my merchant brother’s house.

On it Neptune stands on a fearsome whale head

and below Jonah dives from the monster’s jaws.

Or, here is a lemon carefully peeled

rind a curling ribbon.

And here is a lobster, darling,

i have cleaned all the meat from it

So you may have it in your studio

the brilliant smooth orange-red.

Did Chardin’s wife say

i baked this splendid brioche today

and trimmed it with mint leaves

from the plant in the backyard.

I’ll leave it...

After the implications

there is the silence of decay.

Later the stems turn water sludge-green.

The perfume from flowers

falls heavy into carpet fibers.

The pears ripen in the wire bowl

and the room fills with that, too.

Pomegranates turn into rattles

and weeks later

a pumpkin lifted from the table

is black bottomed, blown out.

Later sangria from the jumble of fruit

makes my head dangle, lifts my body.

But first, there is the urge to eat

pressing upon me.

And the desire to restore order

to all this kerfuffle

to fold velvet and wind ribbon

to chop and...

In a blue velour housecoat

my mother her sad beautiful eyes

long ago i promised

i would never write about her.

I couldn’t have known

how large the territory of love.

Its shape unknown, uncharted.

The source finally undiscoverable.

My mother of the bare white walls

has come to love certain paintings.

To feel joy at five in the morning

looking alone

with her coffee in darkness

and through the sun’s rising.

Hair damp from the shower

hand by the ashtray on the white table.

Before this i was afraid imagining

her by herself.

But already i have said too...

The sun won’t stay for dinner

its mid-winter manners abominable

i sit beside glass

looking at snow

almost blue

at this time of day, of year

wait to turn on lights

resistant to metamorphosis

when glass becomes smoky mirror.

The three trout Rob used in his still life

whisked in and out

so the house wouldn’t hold their memory

are now simmering in a stock pot.

Surrounded by gerbera and grapes, apples, pears

their sleek, grey, spotted bodies

were metallic, other-worldly

difficult in their wholeness

glistening in the weak, reaching

mid-day sun

so far away from water.

I understand why...

The ship — your ocean cruiser — has docked

and from the port bow

you can see me through opera glasses

on my break from the bookstore

in the foodcourt.

On the table a steaming plate of greasy noodles

a copy of theQuill and Quire

my elbow — head connected to hand.

Take down your glasses now

think of me at work, the bookseller.

Too rare is the magic carpet.

Patterned in red and yellow, green, black.

I roll it tightly, tie it with twine.

Gingerly holding it all the way

to the bottom of the bag.

But then there are the...

I was Galatea then.

Trying to re-make myself

trying to separate who i was

from all the forces that had breathed life into me.

And wanting, too, to understand my roots

to feel my body as soft marble or cool hard ivory.

To imagine myself as ruins

first my nose knocked off, then head, arms.

I was Galatea,and my life had begun quietly, still.

I was Galatea then, when i had no words

to hold in my arms

and i knew what Leonardo da Vinci had said:

they do not throng from many provinces

to the foot of the poem...

Don’t be captivated by the postcard view

its long exposure of white light, its fish eye.

In the inexorable lazy jaws of this city tonight

a woman looks out the kitchen window of her third

story walk-up

the view a gigantic billboard

a waif in leather and false lashes advertises downtown

shopping.

On the other side — a plate of deep fried chicken

delivered to your door in minutes.

She stands by the fridge

an abundance of carrot sticks and cottage cheese in

its belly.

She stands there consuming a box of chocolates

loving her body in the time it takes...

A woman prepares to set sail on an epic journey —

a journey into the kitchens of the burning city

into the devouring flames.

She is girded in standard issue

body hugging armour

constructed of fashion magazine covers

delicately welded together.

Faces punched out from behind

exist three-dimensionally.

On the shield is her own face —

computer altered, enhanced.

Her neck slender, elongated, swan-like.

She recognises only her eyes — one blue, one green.

This one small imperfection

overlooked.

She has the shield and the brittle bone whistle swinging

from around her neck. But her only weapon

this ridiclous

clumsy sort of beauty....

Once there was a painter, Zeuxis.

The painter rendered grapes so faithfully —

the gnarled vine, the glazed violet —

so bewitchingly, small birds would hover

heavy with desire, their wings invisible

and nip and peck at them.

Once there was a painter, Zeuxis.

In a contest with Parrhasius

following the usual performance

of tiny beaks, much flapping and flutter

with aplomb Zeuxis dared his rival to withdraw

a painted drapery.

Oh, but these same pictures

wouldn’t find quite so many pretty pigeons today.

And yet we know we are all of us pigeons.

I propose that we tell each other stories...

Though none have been identified, Artemisia Gentileschi was

said to have painted still lifes of fruit.

Painting was my heart’s first language.

I painted before ever reading or writing

thought in pictures before speaking.

The knowledge carried inside the body

in the mind becomes colour, form, shadow and light.

Becomes pictures that can never completely

be expressed in words.

The way that a dream re-told flattens.

The translator’s nightmare, this moment

trying to coax gold into platinum, platinum into gold

each changing from solid to liquid

but refusing to shift from one pot on the fire to

the next.

I...

I was more ears than eyes

alone in the studio at night

touching up my paintings by candle light.

Sometimes i would close my eyes and sing soprano.

Feeling the darkness as Judith must have

in Holofernes’ tent — unsure of who lurked outside.

As an unexpected ally — an enemy turned friend.

And i felt there my namesake, Artemis, too.

The moon outside the small open window.

Painting in the light of day, i would think

i will show them what a woman can do.

And i stole from Michelangelo and from Caravaggio.

I went where they had gone and where...

Judith again, i would say.

She came to me often in waking dreams

i never turned her away.

When she first came to speak to me

i had been shattered by la donna Tuzia.

Tuzia — family friend, neighbour.

So simply described it is unnecessary.

I knew i would never again have a true friend.

When she held me in the palm of her hand

dropped me on the floor, left me

did she not guess i would take up the straw broom

sweep myself into a blue glass dish.

It was not so much the dropping as the leaving.

I...

My paintbrush was often betrayed

by knife, fork and spoon, the empty dish.

Waiting for payment

it seemed i was always waiting, always hungry.

I was forever almost bankrupt

owing on a bumbling assortment of things.

There was the high cost of models.

I would write his most serene highness, illustrious lord

explaining there are many kinds of beauty.

while some would hire three models to paint nine

women

i could not cut such corners.

And besides, surprisingly, these women eat too.

There was my first daughter’s wedding.

This sorely taxed me, broke me yet again.

And good or bad...

He was simply a man.

Agostino Tassi. Hired by my father to teach me

perspective.

When he raped me

he was a rank smelling trained bear

green and orange striped flounce around his neck

paws in the air

performing his sole trick

sluggish, sad.

Afterwards, my quart of blood

menstrual and virginal mingling

on the white linen soaking into the mattress.

What could i do but clean it up?

I soaked the sheet in a bucket of vinegar and water.

Watched the blood escape, pull away from the fabric.

I looked at the red cloud in the water

and wondered...

When my eyes changed to broken glass

and i could only see a coin’s breadth

of the canvas at a time

i turned it on its side, then upside down

or looked at it in mirrors

my back to it.

There are moments in a life

that slip away from sight

like a painting does

the weeks and days you are so close

your eyelashes come away coloured.

When it is sold and gone

it flashes before your eyes

even years later

when you are studying pastries in a shop

or tapping melanzane at the market.

There are moments that...