The Re-Invention of Papier Collé, by Austin Sanchez-Moran

Fruit Dish and Glass, by Georges Braque (France), 1912.

The Re-Invention of Papier Collé

It all started with simultaneous perspective.
Braque and Picasso retreating to the Pyrenees.

The Spaniard told how he had learned to paint
ugly, even if it was young lady prostitutes
and the Frenchman said that he could now paint
beastly, turning an entire village into squares.

They shared a villa, but faced different sunsets.
They shared their work, but kept separate studios.

Then one summer morning at the breakfast table
Pablo put on an African Mask. Georges puffed his pipe.
Pablo danced around as Georges blew smoke
at the chipped fruit dish and both rushed back to work.

They cut up the wallpaper, gathered some scrap wood. 
They mounted an easel in the center of the kitchen.

Braque scrawled and shaded a bunch of grapes
and a lemon, a pear, and Picasso paced around
the still near-blank canvas and then charcoaled “BAR” 
then “ALE” in block letters in two of the corners.

When they finished, the fragments were bizarre.
Gluey radicals pasting together in the Pyrenees.

Austin Sanchez-Moran

Austin Sanchez-Moran received his MFA in Poetry from George Mason University, where he was a Laanan Fellow and then an Honors Fellow. His poems and short fiction have been published or are forthcoming in Catamaran Literary Journal, Denver Quarterly, Laurel Review, and Salamander Magazine, among many others. Also, he had a poem chosen for the anthology, Best New Poets of the Midwest (2017).