The Italian Girl by Matisse

Scraped into the canvas as France bleeds

into Verdun field

The Italian girl’s becoming

immortalized in her pose

Controlled by the painter’s eye

Her mask never slips

A stiff willow brushed with ink-dark tress

The olive-stained canvas leans in, 

comforting her reticence

In a hint of crossed hands-prayer

she stands half-starved of feeling

as tense as a violin chord

Coerced to a limit of painterly tension

He knows, He sees

She is his embodiment of elegy

When bodies were not allowed to speak

His brush a soft note of the chaos, 

an unraveling

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About the Author

Clare Lavery is a writer & lecturer. Interested in Languages, Identity, and issues of migration and displacement from the victim's perspective.

Twitter handle: @clerotto