Junk

Junk

By Jean Nordhaus On James Hampton’s The Throne of the Third Heaven of the Nations’ Millennium General Assembly   Everything begged to be saved: three-legged tables, arthritic chairs. The blind light bulbs and sprung valises longed to be lifted,...
Young Woman Watering a Shrub

Young Woman Watering a Shrub

After the painting by Berthe Morisot Andrea Watson Enter the yellow house at 5 Rue Guichard: Step through the Salon: Glimpse the terrace— Edma Pontillon, past-dawn, in her morning dress, Lily-woman among the half-closed flowers. She does not feel your eyes, the subtle...
“Undressing”

“Undressing”

By Leslie Ullman (from Natural Histories) After  “L’Acropole,” by Paul Delvaux First he noticed my face, he said. At a distance the bones surfaced, they split the light into pools of no light and my hair, he said, so colorless yet full of breath. He would walk into...
In the Alte Pinakothek

In the Alte Pinakothek

By Lynn Levin (After Rembrandt’s The Angel Prevents the Sacrifice of Isaac in the Alte Pinakothek, Munich, Germany) With Rembrandt, it is Isaac in the foreground, bound upon the kindling, splayed across his face, his father’s hand, his body splashed with light,...
Bacchino Malato*

Bacchino Malato*

By Joan Roberta Ryan (After Caravaggio’s self-portrait as Bacchus, in the Galleria Borghese) No wine, and the fruit is scant, softening grapes to hold, and barely a bunch for the table, peaches too hard to ripen, and not a leaf among them. I pull a strand of ivy...