Monday, November 30, 2015

November 30 -- Ellaraine Lockie

After “The Bath” by Pierre Bonnard in the Tate Modern Art Gallery in London

The Bath
by Ellaraine Lockie                                                 
                                                               
She stares straight ahead
Stretched out soaking au naturel
in a stark white tub
and trance-like state
Blind to his brush strokes
Pierre Bonnard's wife subject
Portrayed at a time
when water therapy
was treatment for tuberculosis
Or obsessive neurosis
One wonders whether she
wasn't already dead
The water having fatally failed
And the corpse prepared for viewing
with oil paint preservation
Bonnard's depiction
a conjugal composition inquest
Or whether she has
succumbed to coma
Paint-paralyzed by the parade
of people invading her privacy
The Tate Gallery
a modern municipal bathroom

Previously published in Taproot Literary Review

Painting can be viewed: 

http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/bonnard-the-bath-n04495


Ellaraine Lockie is a widely published and awarded author of poetry, nonfiction books and essays.  Her chapbook, Where the Meadowlark Sings, won the 2014 Encircle Publication’s Chapbook Contest.  Her twelfth collection has been released as an internal chapbook, Love Me Tender in Midlife, in IDES from Silver Birch Press.  Other recent work has received the Women’s National Book Association’s Poetry Prize, Best Individual Collection from Purple Patch magazine in England for Stroking David's Leg, winner of the San Gabriel Poetry Festival Chapbook Contest for Red for the Funeral and The Aurorean's Chapbook Spring Pick for Wild as in Familiar. Ellaraine teaches poetry workshops and serves as Poetry Editor for the lifestyles magazine, Lilipoh. She is currently judging the Tom Howard/Margaret Reid Poetry Contests for Winning Writers.

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