Self-Portrait in Watercolour at Twenty-Nine, by Virginia Barrett

Standing Odalisque Reflected in a Mirror, by Henri Matisse (France). 1923.

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. ​