Eva Gouel’s Last Tango with Picasso, by Jennifer Hambrick

Female Nude (I Love Eva), by Pablo Picasso (Spain), 1912.

​Eva Gouel’s Last Tango with Picasso 
                       "Women are machines for suffering."-- Pablo Picasso 

For all the machismo
of your slashing diagonals
you cannot bear the absence
of our close embrace,
the demise of your dominance.          
So on canvas you dance your denial:
one primal stroke dissects
the curve of my neck
you slant the slope of my shoulders
into the flatline of the future.
The breasts you once kissed,
the womb you might have rounded
are in your hands half-moons
burdened with the guache of grief
sisters of the love-sick moon
who illuminates the anguish
of your blank stare.
You make certain
no one else will caress                                                      
the flesh you slice
from my thighs
that my dismembered fingers
will grasp no other shoulders
in a sudden lunge
submitting to another’s will.
The love letter you write
—J’aime Eva—
where your angles part my legs
shortens the single step
between love and death
between the red-green-yellow-blue
of children’s toys with which
you paint my moods
and the black
of your bladed lines.
And while you remake my mind
into an empty latticework
my eyes remain open but unseeing
lips still and silent.
With this dance of death
your genius flowers
yet transforms me--
partner, playground--
into your milonga, the scene
of an immortal crime. 

Jennifer Hambrick

This poem was first published in A Rustling and Waking Within: Poems Inspired by the Arts in Ohio, ed. Sharon Fish Mooney (Ohio Poetry Association Press, 2017).

A Pushcart Prize nominee, Jennifer Hambrick was a winner in the 2017 international Golden Triangle Haiku Contest and received prizes in the 2017 Montenegrin International Haiku Competition (English) and the 2017 Kaji Aso Studio International Haiku Competition (Boston).  Her debut chapbook Unscathed (NightBallet Press), was nominated for the Ohioana Book Award. Her work has appeared in the Santa Clara Review, Third Wednesday, Mad River Review, Heron Tree, Pudding Magazine, River River, Muddy River Poetry Review,  the major Japanese newspapers The Asahi Shimbun (The Morning Sun) and The Mainichi (The Daily News), Modern Haiku, and many more. Jennifer Hambrick is founder and editor of the International Women's Haiku Festival.  A classical musician and public radio broadcaster and web producer, Jennifer lives in Columbus, Ohio, USA.  Her blog, Inner Voices, is at jenniferhambrick.com.