"Dreaming with Picasso," an ekphrastic series of poems by Grace Lynn
Picasso Defeats Pythagoras, and I Dream as Marie, Not as Picasso’s “Golden Muse”
I Dream as Marie, Not as Picasso’s “Golden Muse”
Inspired by Picasso’s The Dream Browsing Galleries Lafayette, I stumble upon you, desperate to paint my 17-year-old face with your 45-year-old fingers. Brushstrokes became covert sex. Divide my body in two, half awake, half asleep in clashing color. In-between haze, bumping reality into fantasy. Head tipping to the right of my reclining body. You abuse me into a museum of your lust— my face a foxhole for your erection, my muted green dress straps droop like wilting leaves to expose my right nipple. What games you play, loosening hinges of tulle I double checked were fastened like the lock on my diary. Intertwined fingers a ‘v’ to misplace my vagina in my hands. Legs flutter open slightly to assemble flirtatious lips. You’re getting pretty good at failing to see me as I am— tranquil in my soft smile. Lax muscles tuned as Yo-Yo Ma’s strings to slouch. Behind me, panels of forest. To the right, a curtain of red squares that might be flowers. I am done guessing what Picasso sees. Give me back my body, my introspection my mother’s meiosis manufactured into me. Give me back my smooth lines, my pastel colors, my necklace beaded in yellows and reds, the easy curves of my neck. I want my spine, my undivided self arcing into the sweet river of dreams.
Picasso Defeats Pythagoras
Inspired by Picasso’s Dora Maar Seated Breasts a bouquet of black lines. Arms a flatland blurring into a cedar chair. Skirt a siren red triangle of furniture. I shop for trigonometries of dresses that scream. I never forget to press mute. I play hide & seek despite my growing age. I don’t care about numbers. My doppelgänger nose points at you but doesn’t smell sweat or aftershave. It’s an island, an archipelago, skidding off the mainstream. I collect torso dyslexias. Go ahead, swallow LSD, gin on the rocks, Tilt-A-Whorl vertigo or prescriptions pills of placebo. It’s all the same difference. Yes, I refuse to cut my nails. I like them dangerously sharp, polished red deaths against the soft curl of my rubicund cheek. What madness to desire critique. I am sphere & acute angle, lush & severe. A oneness of contradiction, profile & outward gaze, a face testing color— the hiccup where without is within, airbrushed eyelash stalemate— one flutters this way, the other that. You can’t catch me in a clause, an em dash snagging solutions to X, Y, Z polynomial me. Maybe the body isn’t a problem to be solved. Call me Prokofiev, not Pythagoras. I am a color-wheel of voltas, Escher staircases ascended to arrive in the billiards room of a basement, a pool ball collision of reason. Abracadabra I disappear right when you suspect you find me. My hypotenuse is not opposed to a right angle. I like the world wrong, my missing sides missing. Now it’s time to put aside your TI-89.
Grace is an emerging painter who lives with a chronic illness and is working on her first collection of poetry. Her work explores the intersections between the natural world, art and disability. In her spare time, Grace enjoys listening to Bob Dylan, reading suspense novels and exploring absurd angles of art history.
Thank you for these powerful poems. Thank you for talking back to Picasso.