The Actress Polina Strepetova, by Gary P English

Pelageya Strepetova (dimunitive Polina), by Nikolai Yaroshenko (Russia) 1884

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.