January 19th, 2016

Las Meninas, by Diego Velázquez, 1656.

Las Meninas

the point of the painting
to which the eye is drawn
sends backpackers hiking

mystics in search of
what is real and what is false
as if they were oak

framing the painting
cutting lines around truth
as if by being

still we could witness
brush strokes and splinters and by
using reason reason

there is a point
at which we know the smudge
is on canvas, not
on the lens through which we see


Las Meninas

a mirror is a garden
gives back light not caught
in colour            a garden growing daughter
the daughter caught curious   she
let herself laugh               we see
her without her knowing            without
letting herself ourself    be known,    we

see garden grow not
at all      always same dressing always
same glass of water        always same
not seeing           same
not sure of self                 indefinite

the garden's upper third framed by frames, paintings
he finished before           paintings
he let stay growing           stay
unfinished         let stay not let
go           the slant third unseen
comes into view              step back
the garden          step
back       the taste of self grows in the garden
stop seeing a garden
see a mirror instead


Phillip Barron

Phillip Barron's first book of poetry, What Comes from a Thing, won the 2015 Michael Rubin Book Award and was published by Fourteen Hills Press. Elsewhere, his writing appears in New American Writing, Brooklyn Rail, Janus Head, Orion, Saw Palm, and Radical Philosophy Review. He is a member of the Squaw Valley Community of Writers and served as the 2012 editor of Squaw Valley Review.