Queen of Rods

***

He’s Peruvian, an artist. “Come see my paintings,” he said. “Stand close.” What appeared solid from a distance was actually a mass of intertwined symbols close up — sacred symbols.

Nine yellow cups and blue fish are vibrating through cut glass. It’s the afternoon sun this time of year. The light is creeping to the left getting brighter and whiter until it leaves earlier and earlier each day. There’s a strange flower with green leaves that are too large overwhelming the gray flower. I look at the painting and see a pale face, drained, looking tired. Plants are cut only to reappear greener and stronger, with stems like poles, stamens like innards. She covers up, covers her neck, her arms, because there is no sun and it’s cold. She’s pale, bored, or is that confused — pushed to the back by purple flowers. The only colorless thing is her face. It’s been borrowed, the color, and given to the flowers. A mutated sunflower that steals the color from her eyes. Women are covered in stiff wimples, but not her. Thick auburn hair waves and twists. The Queen of Rods wears a crown. There are thorns but not on the crown. She’s flat as an icon, and I can’t read her expression. I can only guess. She’s the Queen of Secondary Colors.

“I see hummingbirds in there,” I said.

“Yes,” he said. “In the Amazon, we call them the bringers of fire. In Mexico, they are a darker symbol of the underworld.”

His art is strong, painted on glass. “I didn’t work for a couple of years,” he said.

I knew that. Everyone knew about his depression.. Even the Iowasca trips to South America hadn’t helped. His friend said, “Maybe you’ll talk to him. You’re a poet. He respects that. His brother is a poet.”

***

About the Author

Sandra Giedeman’s poetry and fiction have appeared in Critic, Poetry, Pearl, Press, Bellevue Literary Review (NYU School of Medicine), California Poetry Quarterly, Cortland Review, Prosetoad, Clapboard House, and Mudfish. She won the Mudfish Poetry Prize judged by Charles Simic and an honorable mention in the Nob Hill Pen Women’s Literary Competition.