Take Magritte, by Paul Fisher

Clairvoyance, by Rene Magritte (Belgium), 1936.

Take Magritte 

for example.  He sees an egg 
but paints a bird.  He paints himself 
ogling the egg while painting the bird.  
He pictures himself eating the egg 
while dreaming the bird.
In another life the bird returns.
She is nothing 
but a hole in the bird-shaped sky.
And Magritte?  He’s green as a feather.  
He’s an apple an inch from your eye.

Take me.  I see him painting a pipe.
He writes, “This is not a pipe,”
under the painted pipe.  I write
within the poem, “This is not a poem,”
though it must ring true if it curves, 
has a clapper, and isn’t a bell.
Take Magritte again.  I see him in a room 
with his painted brush and comb.  He writes,
“This is not a room; this is not death; this is
not about a poem.”

Paul Fisher

This poem was first published in Mannequin Envy.

Paul Fisher lives in Seattle with his wife, Linda, two bossy cats and a five-pound poodle. A former visual arts teacher, he is the recipient of an Individual Artist Fellowship in Poetry from the Oregon Arts Commission. His first book, Rumors of Shore, won the 2009 Blue light Book Award, and his second, An Exaltation of Tongues, is forthcoming from MoonPath Press. His poems have appeared in journals such asThe Antioch Review, Cave Wall, Crab Creek Review, Cutthroat, Nimrod, and Switched-on Gutenberg. Paul believes lyric poetry has as much in common with painting as it has with prose.