After Rousseau’s The Dream, by Julie E. Bloemeke

The Dream, by Henri Rousseau (France) 1910

After Rousseau’s The Dream
Museum of Modern Art, 2016
 
Signature as big as two 
of his painter’s palms,
 
he shares a flourish of river
under the U, as if to claim:
 
my body, my water, 
this planet.  And you.
 
Gabelou of too many tolls, 
he chose paint
 
as proclamation, 
left the gates of Paris
 
for the easel 
that promised nothing.
 
It’s easy to look down 
the primitive nose, 
 
the veined foreground 
fronds as too craft in craft.  
 
Until the pachyderm eye, 
our own. 
 
Never mind that he never 
set foot in a rainforest 
 
tangle, relied only his hothouse 
eye, the transplanted
 
specimens under the glass 
roof of Jardin des Plantes.
 
How not to miss his penchant 
for menace, predilection for feral,  
 
the baited wait of crouch
and hunt?  And what of that 
 
odd hand—his own?--
ever unsatisfied, 
 
not reaching for flower 
but expecting absence instead?
 
Rousseau, if I were to tell you, Starry 
Night hung beside your Dream, 
 
that more stopped for your sofa
than his sky, would you have believed 
 
any of it? I doubt you would have 
doubted it.  It is why we cleave 
 
to you, you who proclaimed 
it was 
 
until it was.  They say Picasso’s 
famous eye unjungled you 
 
from the critic’s
bite.  But I’d like to think we see
 
too—maybe in the cymbal 
plate of her breasts, 
 
or the thumbtack 
strike of her navel, or even
 
in how you push against 
the bones, create humor
 
in the ordained 
wisp of whiskers.  
 
How could we expect otherwise
from a man undulled 
 
by the constant 
drop of coins?
 
How could we not want to know 
what strings
 
your violin hands played
in your head
 
as you stretched 
your body for this canvas?
 
I will always be greedy
for the underbelly of the snake, 
 
wishing it not hidden 
by the glade.  
 
But maybe I am wrong to want.
That the serpent
 
is undone 
under the imperfect
 
moon should be enough.
But then the lunar howl
 
returns me to the sly 
pupiled nipple, her finger
 
that points for the intentional 
leaves, woven into the shape 
 
of a dress, the hourglass 
that emerges only 
 
when we stalk 
against the positive space.
 
These are the truths 
of your tricks and antics, 
 
And we wait for them— 
align our lion’s eye--
 
like the drop of an orange
ripe from the primate’s hand.
 
Julie E. Bloemeke
 
This poem was a finalist for the 2020 Fischer Prize, Telluride Institute, and published on their website.
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Julie E. Bloemeke (she/her/hers) is the 2021 Georgia Author of the Year Finalist for Poetry.  Her debut full-length collection Slide to Unlock (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2020) was also chosen as a 2021 Book All Georgians Should Read, one of only two poetry collections selected statewide for the honour.  Currently an associate editor for South Carolina Review, she also recently served as co-editor for the Dolly Parton tribute issue of Limp Wrist Magazine and was a finalist for the Telluride Institute's 2020 Fischer Prize. Her poems, essays, and interviews have appeared in numerous publications including Writer’s Chronicle, Prairie Schooner, Cortland Review, Gulf Coast, EcoTheo Review, South Dakota Review, and others. A 2021 fellow at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, she teaches online workshops and is a freelance writer, editor, and guest lecturer.  To learn more: https://www.jebloemeke.com  Twitter:  @jebloemeke