"Still Life with Calla Lillies" by Matthew Woodman

Still Life with Calla Lillies
(after the Rufino Tamayo painting Naturaleza muerta con alcatraces, 1924)

conforms not to geometrical imperatives
will see your still life and raise you
a hallucinatory recession of huichol lilies
a painting of a painted vase repeating
lilies on black     lilies on red a center
piece of lilies      those greens look not
like leaves but wrinkled newborn
closed lids of the freshly dead
the tablebone      polished planed flat
oh! oh! oh!
I am not ready are you ready proceed
outlined in a sequence of implied spring

Matthew woodman

Matthew Woodman teaches writing at California State University, Bakersfield, and is the founding editor of the journal, Rabid Oak. His writing appears in recent issues of Sonora Review, Puerto del Sol, Habitat, Memoir Mixtapes, and Mojave Heart Review, and more of his work can be found at www.matthewwoodman.com.

Photo Credit: Staff