Melancholy Woman, by Leland James

Melancholy Woman, by Pablo Picasso (Spain) 1903

​Melancholy Woman
  
the whore 
of those with syphilis 
the prison Saint Lazare
 
the same of Pablo ached
 
she would surely wither
the ache in her unlocked
unchecked left rotting
 
soon
 
the drape of blue
her chiseled face
to drop away
 
not yet today
firm 
reposed 
 
the face 
Raimondi, Manet
knew—“artists steal”
 
Pablo knew this face 
and recently another 
from Montmartre the same
 
eternal
 
—he wrote "the artist & his model"
turn your back
but stay in view at the same time
(now look away,
anything else confuses) …
i separate day from night
and the starless sky
from the empty heart--
 
the whore
 
the model 
with syphilis imprisoned
like the other all the others 
 
stolen 
 
away in a prison cell
the window behind her
painted without bars

Leland James
​
Leland James is the author of five poetry collections, four children’s books in verse, and a book on creative writing and poetry craft. He has published over three hundred poems in poetry venues worldwide including Rattle, The Lyric, London Magazine, The London Reader, The South Carolina Review, The Spoon River Poetry Review, New Millennium Writings, The American Poetry Review, Acumen, Carillon Magazine, The Dawntreader, The Haiku Quarterly, Taj Mahal Review, The American Cowboy, and The Ekphrastic Review. Leland was the winner of The UK’s Aesthetica Creative Writing Award and the Writer’s Forum Short Poem contest. In the USA, Leland has won The Little Red Tree International Poetry Prize, the Portland Pen Poetry Contest, and was the winner of an Atlanta Review International Publication Prize. Runners-up and Honors: the Sequestrum Editor's Reprint Awards, the Fish International Poetry Prize in Ireland, the Welsh International Poetry Prize, London Magazine Poetry Contest, and Aesthetica Magazine Creative Writing Award for Poetry. Honors: the Bridport Prize, Morton Marr, The Southwest Review, and many others. Leland has been featured in Ted Kooser’s American Life in Poetry and was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. 
www.lelandjamespoet.com
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/leland-james