at age forty-five
desire crawled up the inside
of her right leg like a fire
ant hot for the scent of
a season in maturity
its almost-over
its final scene
what happened next
may be washed clean
Field Notes
“You know how when something really touches you, it feels like burning.”
– Surrealist artist Leonora Carrington, describing the feeling of seeing Max Ernst’s paintings for the first time. Carrington and Ernst became lovers for three years, until he was jailed by Germans as a degenerate artist in occupied France.
Quoted in Regina Marler, “In the Cauldron of Midnight,” New York Review of Books, March 8, 2018.
Image: Max Ernst, Two Children Are Threatened by a Nightingale (1924)