Guernica at MOMA, by Jonathan Stolzenberg

Guernica, by Pablo Picasso (Spain) 1937

Guernica at MOMA
 
I was ten, 
I wanted an egg salad sandwich in the cafeteria, wanted
to see Pablo’s funny goat in the courtyard. 
No.
 
The horse:       
black lines scratched on a world of white exposed 
its great thick neck, head turned up to empty air.
Dagger-toothed mouth screamed,
balled buccal muscles strained from lifting 
its railed chest and back
to legs that might run to sweet grazing.
 
I moved from sketch to sketch to painting:
screaming people
broken buildings and the impossible — above the horse --
naked light bulb ­­— pupil of an eye.
  
I stood there.
Horse took me, took all I was, expanded to fill the room, 
rode me.  
 
We two became chimera in a world of black and gray, 
white spaces shined, 
offered peace but no entrance.
 
I stood there.  I stand here,
this memory stretches like metal heated under pressure, 
frozen, ready to fissure.     
 
The horse riding,
still riding me.
​
Jonathan Stolzenberg

Jonathan Stolzenberg is a retired Developmental/Behavioral Pediatrician and Family Psychotherapist living in West Hartford CT. He is a docent at the New Britain Museum of American Art in New Britain CT. He is a graduate of Harvard College and obtained a Master’s in Creative Writing/Poetry from Trinity College, Hartford  at age fifty.  His work has been published in  The Notre Dame Review, The Texas Review, The Louisville Review, Caduceus, The Connecticut Review, and Gulf Stream Magazine.  He has rejections from some of the best poetry journals, and is a proud member of The Back Room Poets.