Muse in Red with Yellow Hair
(after Picasso’s The
Red Armchair, 1931)
Picasso
drew her lips
&
eyes with what appears to be
an
ink pen. Thin lines. Mistress
&
model, the painter shows her
voluptuous
curves & red
stripes
in the red arm chair.
Round
breast beckons, curvilinear.
She
hangs at the Art Institute, Chicago.
She
is now my muse, too. Nancy.
Older,
equally blond, curvaceous,
in
a red room. I watch her paint
her
own lips, small, ideally
shaped,
echo of Picasso.
Red
lips lure me to her face,
beneath
yellow hair. Her
brown
eyes & hoop earrings
bemuse
me. Two Chicago women.
Picasso’s
muse does not smile.
My
muse—Nancy—does, she
moves
in a red dress, knit, lace.
She
faces me, but also looks
away,
double vision. Her profile-
portrait
in oils seems ready
to
leave; his mistress sees Picasso
off
stage. Her lips part. Room dresses
in
red hues, Nancy’s red lace
on an armchair. Artists obsess.
Michael H. Lythgoe was nominated for a Pushcart
Prize in 2012. His chapbook, Brasss, won the Kinloch Rivers contest
in 2006. His full collection, Holy Week, is available from B&N.com
as an ebook. Lythgoe received an MFA from Bennington College after service as
an Air Force officer. His essay on the obsessions of artists received a
literary award from the Porter Fleming Foundation in 2011. He has recent work
in Windhover, Slant, The Caribbean Writer, Spillway, Cairn, The Santa
Fe Review, Verge, and Petigru Review. Mike lives in Aiken, SC.
