the great painter

she undresses herself, upon your orders.

you are the artist. the brush and paint.

your white beard speaks your years of greatness.

by the strokes of your brush a woman must live.

even to outlive her flesh.

you tell her to lie on the white floor. she follows.

no decent society likes the bluntness of her

frontal nudity. you choose her other side.

raise the leg a little bit higher. she covers her face

with her brown arms. you tell her not to show her face.

her eyes speak much about misery. it shall only be her body.

it is the body that your clientile likes.

you tell her to roll. she rolls on the white floor now

wet with her sweat.

there she is. Naked before us. On this picture

of her body. No face. No eyes.

it was done for hours. the painting is another masterpiece

of a de joya.

i am taking notes. I am taking into consideration

the numbness of the woman's body staying still for hours.

her thoughts about a husband with drinking problems.

her child at the hospital. her pregnant daughter.

her mother in the province sick with tuberculosis.

her father in prison for stealing a chicken.

her brother lured into communism in the mountain.

all the while she heard the bursting of guns.

smelling of gunpowder.her list of problems.

her quest for the next lunch. after hours of her naked pose

for the master painter, she forgets about the dress

which she left on the chair. It is not part of the painting.