Carol Frith – Ⅱ
Madonna Posing on a Chair
The deconstructed woman in the chair
re-sizes color, angles shifting in
the light of what she will or won’t begin,
her nursing child unhinging in the air.
She can’t descend. She isn’t on the stair –
a blank Madonna, color planes too thin
to redefine the angles where she’s been.
The child bisects her. Children have a flair
for this. Trapezoids project in plates
that angle flesh from light and space – the child,
the woman, and their flat, uncertain bones
reorganizing space. The woman waits
beyond her infant and her flesh, a wild
geometry of shifting squares and cones.
(from a painting by Diego Rivera)
The deconstructed woman in the chair
re-sizes color, angles shifting in
the light of what she will or won’t begin,
her nursing child unhinging in the air.
She can’t descend. She isn’t on the stair –
a blank Madonna, color planes too thin
to redefine the angles where she’s been.
The child bisects her. Children have a flair
for this. Trapezoids project in plates
that angle flesh from light and space – the child,
the woman, and their flat, uncertain bones
reorganizing space. The woman waits
beyond her infant and her flesh, a wild
geometry of shifting squares and cones.