Self-Portraits in a Goblet, by ​John Tessitore

Still-Life with Flowers and Goblets, by Clara Peeters (Flanders) 1612

Self-Portraits in a Goblet

As if it were an adage, that almost anything 
can be brought to the table by careful hands, 
arranged for shape, form, hew, artfully composed 
like a baroque song and made something new.
If seen with discernment, even the iridescence 
of fishscale ignites a dark room, whereas I can 
only imagine the Somme when I see the dead 
corpus cut open, the gruesome history of black 
and white photography. It was her courage 
of vision, then, to show the beauty of the dorsal 
fin, to let the soft belly shine, to arrange all 
the flowers in the same vase and claim them 
for her horn-of-plenty picture. Beside an artichoke 
in a colander, for example. Her genius was a flash 
of pink flesh and an abstract eye looking back, 
expecting more than it will receive, no longer 
a life so uncertain it requires an active attention 
and a constant sustenance, which is the burden 
we bear for ourselves and our children, for whom 
there can never be a single moment’s rest— 
a flash like that only speaks to one who listens.

The young mother was always preparing something 
for later, distracting herself with a restless clatter, 
a tumble of utensils, a palm-slap of linen, a pot 
spilling over, and a quiet curse never not spoken 
with her inside voice, to no one in particular, 
when the darkness took her and the shade was drawn.  
Yet even during the dimmest hour she might stumble 
across a glimmer at the sideboard, an afterthought, 
an expression of the spirit suppressed for so long 
it was almost forgotten, and a color would pop. 
Irises, prawns, a brass candlestick, all were lit 
over the shoulder from a window onto Antwerp, 
through the cold, gray mists of that gateway city 
with its a hard-won comforts and stolen luxuries, 
cutting through the murk of northern pall, damp air, 
a thin ray of brazen light to touch the wild-haired face 
of the trade wind, a frenzied Aeolus stamped beneath 
the pewter lid of her ceramic decanter, bought 
and paid for don’t-ask-how, but here now, another 
foreign juxtaposition to prove the axiom 
that any future bounty will be pieced together 
in seemingly random combinations until 
we are all made whole, all made one again. 

Not yet the sum of my many parts, I am a man 
with his own mixing bowl, still whisking, still lost 
in the froth and batter, still an ill-formed emulsion 
of self and desire and the legacy of my father 
transposed to this place at the edge of nowhere.
My character may not survive the altitude, 
the temperature, the sameness of the ingredients. 
I am becoming a creature of sprawling imprecision 
but I have not lost my edge entirely, not yet, 
and I can still tell when a true artist is showing off. 
Yes, and I applaud any person who insists on presence.  
Three cheers for any declaration of talent on the half
-shell, on the crab leg, on the hard cheese, on a scatter 
of coins in the foreground. Such a casual spilling 
is never as offhand as it may seem, and no one should 
miss the symbolism, how the painterly soul sets 
the value, how the true master is the clever one 
who governs the metaphor, who tenders, who blends.
The hidden one whose will contains multitudes, she 
is the invisible hand steering the ships of Flanders. 
And there she is now in the convex orbs of gilt, 
her face smudged like a child’s first scrawls, a likeness 
in simple shapes configured to claim possession, 
the owner and keeper surrounding plain sight, 
six times! like a winking ghost, a guiding spirit, 
the proud maker of loaves and fishes whose hour 
only comes when it is time to draw the wine.

This is the finishing touch then, the culmination. 
In the language of the Bourse, it is the pay-off 
although I wonder how much profit she recovered. 
All of our striving, our effort, our commerce serves 
this moment, so be not afraid of the grand teleology 
of being, of admitting that I you we are the answer 
for everything since, sadly, we can only see so far, 
and every self-denial is someone else’s convenience, 
and surely it is better for us to experience 
the pleasures of consummation, if someone must.
Of course a woman understands the danger better 
than a man, she who barters her dowry for duty, 
who surrenders her womb, who seldom reaches 
satisfaction. How brave for her, then, to insist 
on her name, to slash this lavish canvas, its promises 
kept at the expense of the entire known universe. 
Her name with its common, bland, dull specificity. 
How bold to gather these goods together, 
the breakfasts and banquets, the bouquets, but only 
for their separation, to make this one distinction, 
for once her own impulse—to sever all illusion 
with her bridal knife, its silver handle the frieze 
of a body just like hers, naked before God 
and country, and signed: Clara Peeters.

​John Tessitore

​John Tessitore writes poems and publishes chapbooks, and can’t seem to stop, but at the moment he is most excited about Be True, his podcast “about the writing I love, and the writing I do.”