The Actress Polina Strepetova Twenty-three months ago, after being buried in black and white on page 133 of an obscure book of Russian paintings, you paused, stage left, and began your wordless soliloquy -- unimpressed with your audience of one, buried in olive-drab and khaki in room 205 of a peeling-paint army barracks amid the live colours of South Korea; its cerulean and carmine, golden yellow and chartreuse unseen in the grey world your artist chose. When you passed across the pressed-page theater, your petite drooping shoulders betrayed you: this portrait was no performance, and I felt a foreigner. I didn’t speak the language at the time: I did not understand the tragic angle of your chin, loose lay of your merging fingers, their rough, labored womb poured against your peasant dress like a January night sky in Rybinsk -- Even these were Russian. When Nikolai Yaroshenko painted you (with minor conceit a century ago) did he foresee the glossy pages that would bring you to my attention. Could he have known that a war-monger GI, bred on Budweiser and Playboy, would spend five hundred American dollars and two years learning Russian just to pose these questions to this shadow of your likeness -- which is as close as I will ever come to Moscow. Gary P English Gary P English (they/them/their) lives in Baton Rouge, LA, where they and their partner share a home with a dachshund and two cats. Besides writing, they paint and play the guitar. Their poems have been published in Grey Sparrow Journal, Home Planet News, and Stonecoast Review.
1 Comment
10/28/2024 01:16:41 am
Loved the extended time you and the poem took to make sure we all feel full appreciation for this painting, across several continants.
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November 2024
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