Madame Recamier, by Bill Ratner

Madame Recamier, by Rene Magritte (Belgium) 1967

Madame Recamier

René Magritte was fourteen when his mother drowned herself 
in the Sambre River hooded in crepe 
smelling of old clothes and mal intent. 

He searched her face for a glimpse of eyeholes 
for a way in, a warning as to what 
his fate might be without her. 

Upon a backless daybed 
her sarcophagus is set in place 
bronzed fruit of buried mourning absent of air. 

Her drab casket sits up like a child. 
It is not a pipe or a fish or a sculpture
but an ill-shaped coffin conceived in grief and grizzly jest.

It is his mother immortalized 
in a funerary box with wreathed handles, 
madder-brown, darkened with age. 

A chime sounds on the other side of the wall 
a mirror padded with memory. 
A boy becomes an artist. 

Bill Ratner

Bill Ratner is a Poets & Writers Readings and Workshops Grant recipient, his spoken-word performances are featured on National Public Radio’s Good Food, The Business, and KCRW’s Strangers, he is a 9-time winner of The Moth Story Slams. His poems, essays, and stories are published in The Chiron Review, The Baltimore Review, Rattle Magazine’s Rattlecast, Pleiades, KYSO Flash, South Florida Poetry Journal, Willawaw Journal, Missouri Review Audio, and other journals. Bill is a voice actor for cartoons, computer games, documentaries, and movie trailers. More info at http://billratner.com/author • @billratner