Algebra

It is amazing what a scandal can be caused

by a black dress, a woman’s bare shoulders,

and an artist’s insatiable greed

for beauty.

I know, he said sorry.




I wonder if you can hear us, 6 generations and an ocean away,

a woman at whose feet men’s hearts became like eggshells,

fragile and falling and breaking…

a restless and inconsistent soul

the belle of your world

and so quickly reduced to tears

by embarrassment.


I’ve never thought of shoulders as particularly sexual,

but I find myself questioning the nature

of temptation now--

a tilt of a head, an escaping of a knee,

the slow bend of a delighted smile;

are these where sin is found?


I touch my tongue to my teeth in a grimace and

watch you again--

you’re staring over your left shoulder

like you’ve heard a sound in the other room,

lightly catching your dress

like you might be ready to move towards it

and walk right off the canvas;

you have on oddly incandescent paleness,

perhaps you are your own light source-- like a lamp,

or a moon.


I wait for you to move

for what seems like forever,

but the canvas doesn’t stir,

and I find myself staring at a mere memory,

a woman stuck in a gray room and a black evening gown.

You are Madame X-- a woman

Sargent first painted to life

and then hid away

and finally repainted and rendered nameless in a patched up apology

neither of you knew he would have to give.


Perhaps this is what is remarkable about painting:

it is a form of capture completely devoid of slavery,

a form of imprisonment with boundaries of neither space nor time nor factuality,

the arrest

of a single moment-- a half-fictionalized memory

that is made uncannily true

by the sheer effort requisite in its creation.


And so partway between watercolors of war and a painting of Monet painting,

somehow you were caught, so beautifully,

and placed in this empty gray room of a canvas, which was hung

to horrified cries of envious shame

--a small price to be paid to be

set down in History

as one of Sargent’s greats--; but

to a young lady like you, the weight of your beauty

will never be light enough to bear.


I have often wondered how shame trickles down the spines of young women,

leaving them in a cold shiver of silence;

the fear of being accused of beauty is only matched by

the fear of never being beautiful enough.

Fear defines womanhood,

encases it in careful planning and careful words,

nodding heads and covered shoulders.


But he slipped off your shawl,

his sharp eyes searching for a more human

celestial body

to paint.

And under his brush,

you became brave in your beauty,

And so he let your light shine before men--

and your shoulders, I suppose.

But it is a strange tragedy that this

caused you such terrible shame

that the only thing left to do

was to strip the picture of your name--

to make you Madame X:

as if you were

Sargent’s best algebra problem,

instead of his best painting.


So then this is perhaps the true problem

with black dresses and women’s shoulders--

it’s just a bit of algebra:

and the artist leaves it up to us

to silence all the voices of accusation

and calculate true beauty:

to find the value

of X.