La Carreta, 2005
The supple skin of the circus tent
will be lowered, folded,
packed for travel.
In Maria Izquierdo’s painting, La Carreta
the sky droops, distant in the night,
its wounded hues go purple at their edges.
The circus has closed.
Pale blue clouds are chased by the darkness.
The mottled gray horse looks past
its left shoulder and deeper
moves into the circle.
The clown is fatigued.
He’s swaddled in shadow.
The strongman hunches low, arcing
with a green heavy ball
and the acrobat changes her clothes.
A high wire artist wraps up her sores.
Actors load the cargo on a flesh-toned cart.
The tender colors of the canvas glow
vanilla, ochre, yellow,
so like the shades of mother’s milk.
a light which makes me consider
a thing my own mother,
also Maria, said to me.
The nipple is the most poetic eye.
It feeds the inner skins, spins,
and tints the silks that line
the chambers of the heart,
the lung, the liver, all the human
organs. The
circus is the body,
bloomed then blanched as the cart
cures and carries it away.
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