Self-Portrait in Watercolour at Twenty-Nine
"Do I believe in God? Yes, when I am working." -Henri Matisse I wore only a sarong, pale turquoise with yellow stripes, tied loosely around my waist; a beaded necklace, amber and blue, fell between my breasts; the closet door opened to angle the mirror right, I rested my shoulder against the wall; I remembered my unease with a photograph of the artist as an old man, seated but leaning on his cane, studying the convergence of his standing model’s thighs; watercolour is an unforgiving medium, the paper as light, as space, as the color white, overworked and the image gets murky; was Matisse gathering the lines of perfect communion in his gaze? I can still hear the thwack, thwacking of the great cable on Jackson moving the cable cars that day, the conductors ringing rhythms with the bells as the fog lifted and then—a stroke of sunlight on my skin. 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.
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July 2025
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