Rothko Contemplating Suicide, by Virginia Barrett

Untitled (Orange and Tan), by Mark Rothko (USA, b. Latvia). 1954.

Rothko Contemplating Suicide

              "The reason for my painting large canvases is that I want to
                be intimate and human."


Of all  the images  imprisoned within, I want   to
paint the fields of colour, Orange and Tan, which
open to  warm space  like  sunflower doors,  like
reams  of  light, like  folded robes  pounded  and
saffron  dyed.  Work  of   the  eye  is  done,  said
Rilke, now, Go and do heart-work. The brush  is
only  an extension of the  hand, sight a  mirror of
need, as the huge canvas becomes a burden 


to   carry  but   still, to  gaze  is  something  more
than to mourn; a  childhood  plagued  by  czarist
troops   slaughtering   Jews,  a   Cossack’s   whip
striking       my      face—these     forms    to     be
enveloped  within;  pools of emotion  to  plunge
into  /  tragedy,   ecstasy,   doom / as   life  flows
onto  the  kitchen  floor, thin washes of  red,  the
razor  slice  a  soft-edged opening  into  the  last
broad      intimacy     of     something     I      don’t
command 

Virginia Barrett

Virginia Barrett’s work has most recently appeared, or is forthcoming in The Writer’s Chronicle, Narrative,  Poetry of Resistance (University of Arizona Press), New Mexico Review, and Forage.  She received a 2017 writer’s residency grant from the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation of Taos, NM. Her chapbook, Stars By Any Other Name, was a semi-finalist for the Frost Place Chapbook Competition sponsored by Bull City Press, 2017. She holds an MFA in Writing from the University of San Francisco and a MAT in Art from Rhode Island School of Design.