a little loving in between …

Vincent Van Gogh —  First steps (after Millet), 1890. Metropolitan Museum of Art.

This post was meant to go out on March 30th, but one thing or another has led to this delay. {Were I a writer, I would call it writer’s block, but since I am not a writer, I don’t know what to call it}.

March 30th marks the birthday of two of history’s most important painters, Vincent Van Gogh, the Dutch impressionist master whose very name and semblance have become icons of the suffering tormented artist, and Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes, the painter of Spanish royals, implacable firing squads, nude and clothed majas and personal demons. Several blog friends have posted on Van Gogh (kimy at mouse medicine and the ever Clever Pup), so here I will include images of some of the better known paintings of the less celebrated Goya. All of the Goya paintings below are part of the permanent collection of the Prado Museum in Madrid.

Followed by a poem.

The Third of May 1808 (1814)

The Clothed Maja (La maja vestida), ca. 1803

The Nude Maja (La maja desnuda), ca. 1799

Saturn Devouring His Son (1819)

Love wounds
When my big-eyed small-town girl
regards her nude body
in our bedroom mirror
there is a sag and wince
in her eyes as they catch
on the long overlapping scars
left by two caesarian sections —
footprints of our daughters’ first steps


Her gaze re-plows the furrowed
slit of pink puckered skin and flesh
mocked in her mornings
by Frankenstein staple smile
the wave where the storm snapped
the oar and ripped the folded sail
when the midwife became surgeon
the stork brought a scalpel to the nest
and the well rehearsed breathing
of birthing pangs and pains succumbed
under sugared swirls of anesthetizing ether


Had I such mystical powers
I would gladly kiss away those scars
from the mirrors of her self-regard
but I don’t know if I could ever
bring myself to make them vanish
from the delicious curve of her soft belly


I would not erase the Rembrandt
craquelure from her Rubens tummy
the mauve ridge I anoint
with the unguent nectar of my narcissus
nor could I release the lightning bolt
captured in amber
the morning the world was created
and the first cradle first rocked


But there are other wounds
that cannot be tickled with my nose
or cupped in trembling hands
wounds that leave no scars
because they never close
never heal
never


Inside those grimaced eyes
there is the throb of such wounds
that my blind archers have caused her
fountains where the morning doe once
drank pine-scented waters in the hidden clearing
before being felled by wayward arrows
gashes that will only be closed
by the final open wound
that devours us all
the day freed lightning
burns down the cathedral forest


Stitched womb
bruised hearts
open grave
crest risen daughters
crest fallen lovers
honeyed waters run into salt sea
my whispering horn serenades
the moist cotton of her pillow
grapevines ripped from trestles
tendrils roaming August winds


Forgive the fevered ghosts that wander here
forgive me if I choke on bloodied words
and if those that struggle out
bring the pain of kindest cuts
but love is not an anesthetic
love is a hallucinogenic
razor lozenge
forever humming in the throat


        * * *
It is Spring,
let me sleep in your waters
scatter cherry blossoms on your mirror
while our wounds learn to love each other

March 30th is also my wedding anniversary. Twenty years after María and I got married our love has brought forth and raised two daughters and borne loving witness to their coming onto the threshold of adulthood. In the nearly quarter century that has passed since we decided to braid our destinies together, we have seen blissful days and days of pain and confusion, memorable inner and outer sojourns and exasperating crises, clouds of butterflies and swarms of hornets. Above all else, the many steps of this journey have nurtured deep and abiding friendship and love. Our love, like life itself, is not perfect — it is achingly real and far more beautiful than all of that.

Feliz aniversario nena.

Debt acknowledgement: the following poetic snippets have danced in my mind while doing this post ...

Advice by and from Langston Hughes
"Folks, I'm telling you,
birthing is hard
and dying is mean—
so get yourself
a little loving
in between."

“let our scars fall in love” — Galway Kinnell

"When a man wishes a woman he will blow a horn.
When a woman wishes a man she eats the cotton of her pillow"
   —Nizar Qabbani


Blog friend Brian of Waystation One will recognize these thoughts from a comment I left on his “Kiss off wedding crasher” post, from which I have outright swiped gratefully borrowed the “pink puckered flesh” image. You have my apologies and thanks, Brian.