Still Life

- after Still Life with Compote and Glass, Pablo Picasso, 1914-15

Picasso, what kind of table have you assembled here

With your ivory dish crooking out like an elbow,

A bicep with halved fruit and mutilated book resting

Upon its porcelain skin? A forgotten newspaper

Split

Down the middle and skewed

As if to imply the slanted truth journalism or a

Reclusive wish to be

Left alone.

Most haunting the frosted goblet, tilting as it

Floats, defying the wooden moldings that threaten to

Anchor it to this place, this time, this meal.

Brimming with inky blackness, you dipped the edge of the crystal

Far too low with your paintbrush,

Until I'm sure that ebony shadow dripped out and pooled

On the surface of your still-life

Ruining your composition.

Oh, Picasso, your pixelation begs for a calm, steady hand to

Rearrange it,

To slide the pieces of this puzzling enigma together.

Fragmented seems about right.

I mark time by the turning of the dial on my Brita water pitcher:

Another two months

Til I change.

Still... life continues.

My plants thrive and wither, pleading with me to

Notice. My own composition of bills and catalogues

And the occasional letter reduce my own table to a

Plateau of paper.

My arms and legs bend, my mouth opens, my eyes blink and spew

Their own liquid on the bedsheets.

Entities of their own and

Sliced from the whole.

Someone, put me together!

Soothe my eyes from this fissure of light and matter.

Hold my hand next to my wrist,

Press my neck into place

And let them heal, veins vining through

Tendons and muscles and bone.

Keep me this way to greet the world.

Don't let me go.

- Emily Gaustad