Poems After Balthus, by Elizabeth Leister

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Self-Portrait as a Girl

after Thérèse, by Balthus (France) 1938
https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/484717

Am I a girl or am I sex?
My tainted finger points to rose light 
gauzy as my blouse, removed.
Vibrating yet absent. 
In a blink my collarbone is mirrored across the floor
where a black cat embroiders shame upon my imagination. 
 
In a strawberry field
ripe fruit stains my youth.
 
In a Citroën my teacher drives us to his home, 
remote, centred in a yellow field. 

In a stranger’s room
vertigo in scarlet shadows.
 
Humiliation imprints me 
as a needle jabbed into my own damp skin. 
Digs a thread through softness.
Tiny cuts open rivulets of doubt.
A drop, a slip.
Dirty as a spectacle.
 
**
 
Geraniums

after Thérèse, by Balthus (France) 1936
https://www.artnet.fr/artistes/balthus/portrait-de-th%C3%A9r%C3%A8se-blanchard-qlzgCs1RUIyz35FmCigstg2

I recognize my narrow face in hers.
Glance sharp gaps.  
Momentary reprieve from monotony. 
Every brushstroke thickens her angle
like a punch to the gut. 
Puts her in her place.
Erased from any record. 
A snarled bow tightens her throat. 
Cuts a word.
Silence can eat a girl up.
Fester and turn a tangle 
of blush ribbon resentful.
When window boxes 
burst blood red buds 
an impossible chorus swells over 
3 Cour de Rohan.
Is there any song we can sing.
 
**
 
Brother

after Brother and Sister, by Balthus (France) 1936 
https://smithsonianprovenance.si.edu/brother-and-sister-frere-et-soeur

Age eleven, she stares 
into a wall of burnt umber 
 
and squints worry 
for things unseen.
 
War, a baby 
left behind.
 
Brother grips her wrist
as men will do.
 
When a fist bites.
When a cat shrieks.
 
His slanted face pierces
the picture plane. 
 
Leaves her suspended 
in his shallow shadow
 
to be painted into stillness.
Filmy as a lace slip.
 
Quiet.
A shredded balloon.
 
**
NB: This poem borrows from "Balloons" by Sylvia Plath.

**

Sallow

after Thérèse, by Balthus (France) 1939
https://www.mutualart.com/Artwork/Etude-pour-Portrait-de-Therese/9159E80297B3A6AA
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She holds his pose, renders his horizon line.
Stares through warp & weft 
another canvas beyond her.
 
A bruise will soften to yellow before it fades.
Taut at the bone and flesh gossamer.  
Inside her glimmer, black eyes 
 
like startled animals plead for rescue. 
Request a pause, wink a distraction? 
Play below the surface of hours.
 
Stiff as a cadaver she counts each stroke.
Her cold numb fingers fondle
stolen brushes under prickly woolens.
 
She follows unspoken rules.
Bleed, marry, bear a child.
Vanish like an odorless fume.
 
 **
 
Restraint

after Thérèse, by Balthus (France) 1939
https://ca.pinterest.com/pin/397442735848988837/

His thick breath separates his imposing 
stance from her static young limbs— 
precocious swirl
of purity and promiscuity.
 
She lowers her eyes like a daydream. 
Melts her knowing body into his tortured postures.
Perfume of bitter coffee, turpentine, stale tobacco. 
Like her, I’ve held my breath till gasping. 
 
Buckled at the knees. Succumbed to remote rituals.
In practiced ceremonies pretended consent.
Every weighted brushstroke, smooth scrape 
of a knife will level a man’s executions. 
 
Now, observe 
our sherbet shoulders 
velvet ribbons
our pallid stare. 
 
Elizabeth Leister

Author's note: Thérèse Blanchard posed for the painter Balthus beginning in 1936 when she was eleven years old. She continued to model through her adolescence resulting in ten paintings that centre Thérèse; some highly charged with a pre-pubescent sexuality that continues to draw controversy. In 2017, a group of women demanded that the Metropolitan Museum of Art take the painting, Thérèse Dreaming, down. The museum refused to remove it from the wall.
 
Thérèse lived with her family in the same Parisian neighborhood where Balthus had a studio at 3, Cour de Rohan. Her modeling presumably made extra money for the struggling family. Thérèse married, had a child and died prematurely in 1950 at the age of twenty-five.  There is little record of her life or death aside from his paintings. She is buried in the Parisian Cemetery of Thiais, in division 63, line 7, tomb 48. There is no headstone to mark her location. Ten poems for Thérèse punctuate the collection.

Elizabeth Leister is a poet and visual artist who conceptualizes uncertainty through a feminist perspective on the body across real and imagined landscapes.  Her poem, "Tiny Coffin," was published in the Hoxie Gorge Review. Leister recently completed her certificate in creative writing with an emphasis in poetry from the UCLA Extension.  She earned an MFA in sculpture from Bard College and lives in Los Angeles.