Death of the Virgin, by Kyle Laws

Death of the Virgin, by Caravaggio (Italy). 1606.

Death of the Virgin, Caravaggio, Louvre                                   

Dress rouge, hands big, misshapen,
but his perspective always was slightly off
to draw attention, make you look.

Man behind and woman in foreground,
heads bent in prayer so you do not stare
at them, but at a face not the least beatific.

A woman in sleep after a long day’s toil,
face slightly ashen with a pearlescence,
the belly protrudes.

Always the virgin about to give birth--
and the alarm goes off one more time
in a attempt to touch the Mona Lisa,

crowd pulsing too much from the back--
ceiling draped in a cloth that points to feet,
the least articulated, all the light near her face

and bent third finger, working hands,
hair auburn or the burn of end of summer
in fields of grapes.

Kyle Laws

Kyle Laws is based out of the Arts Alliance Studios Community in Pueblo, CO where she directs Line/Circle: Women Poets in Performance. Her collections include Faces of Fishing Creek (Middle Creek Publishing), So Bright to Blind (Five Oaks Press), and Wildwood (Lummox Press). Ride the Pink Horse is forthcoming from Spartan Press. With six nominations for a Pushcart Prize, her poems and essays have appeared in magazines and anthologies in the U.S., U.K., and Canada. She is the editor and publisher of Casa de Cinco Hermanas Press.