By
Virginia Chase Sutton
The Starry Night
by Vincent Van Gogh
The artist peers through bars of his insane asylum
window, out into the beyond. It is dim. It is black
yet strangely lit by roiling stars as they circle, spirals
coiling and uncoiling. Perhaps it is Venus burning,
art scholars wonder, but he observes throbbing pulses
above and below him. The moon curdles in her dullness
ringed with fire. A lunatic sees many things from
his cell. Hospitalized, I watch meteors streak across
my vision as I shiver alone on a stone table after
bedtime medications fail me once again. I shudder
and breathe in the flash and sizzle of nighttime’s glare.
I think of mad Vincent, his poor ear sliced off, locked
away in his cell. He stares into a landscape above
the village, marked by one malignant tree and the twirling
sky. It is so odd, it might be dawn, the early hours when
those of us who have been locked away for our safety
rebel. Daylight is so ordinary for those in small town life
but in his search for solace, blackened skies blaze,
stars dazzle, spinning like our aching heads,
the brain may rewire away from magical thinking.
Vincent’s vision bumps against what he can
and cannot see. I spot spitting death-tails.
He discovers luminous circling beauties
cloaked outside his narrow view. Bereft, he writes
his brother that the painting is a failure. But he
is wrong. At evening’s conclusion, embers of starlight
are his masterpiece, rotating the sobbing night.
Phoenix Art Museum by Night Light
You measure, cut the padding, slice the carpet.
Use your blunted fingers to ease it into place,
powerful thigh muscles and knees flex to make
it fit. The museum, the largest in the Southwest,
is 285,000 square feet and you feel privileged
to be the one to take on this task. It is just you
and one guard traveling the galleries and halls
after the museum closes. You have the night
with art. Happily you work beneath Kahlo’s
El Suicidio de Dorothy Hale, the painting
donated by Clare Booth Luce in 1960, horrified
by the depiction of her friend who ended up
dead on the sidewalk in gory glory. And there
is Kahlo’s sometime husband, Diego Rivera,
across the gallery where you spend time gazing
at his work. Slowly you make your way around
the Thorne Rooms, dollhouse-like miniature
rooms from the 16th century to 1925, American
and European. There is a kneeler, like in some
churches, so you can see up close where one inch
equals one foot. It needs fresh carpet, so many
adults and children peering into the detailed
collections. And the Steele Gallery where
designer John Galanos’ works are featured now,
just a part of a 4,500 garment, shoes, and accessories
collection. This man dressed Grace Kelly,
the Duchess of Windsor, Marilyn Monroe. He who
once said “A black dress…reveals everything.”
Nothing is off limits as you carpet your way around
the museum, taking in so much art to your art. You
are proud you were selected for this honor. I
respect your time, how you spend your minutes,
your hours, knowing the museum well myself,
and yet the enchantment when you are atop me,
our breath filling the room with so much heat the window
shatters. I understand, I understand. Your well-known
touch, the loving compliments whispering
in my ear. All around the museum you are in awe
as you are each time we meet, your hands
rough and thick-skinned, yet so gentle as you
send me to ecstasy, beyond reason and
any kind of self-control. O, you feel that way
with art—photographs, prints, paintings—
it is all there, just for you, on your knees,
almost alone in the middle of the night.
Virginia Chase Sutton
Sutton’s second book, What Brings You to Del Amo, won the Morse Poetry Prize. Her first book is Embellishments and her third is Of a Transient Nature. Her chapbook, Down River, was just released. Seven times nominated for the Pushcart Prize, her poems have won the Untermeyer Scholarship in Poetry at Bread Loaf and the Allen Ginsberg Poetry Prize. Her poems appeared in Paris Review, Rise Up Review, and Peacock Journal, among many other publications, journals, and anthologies. She lives in Tempe, Arizona.
Bravo