Garrett Lemery, Flagler College

The Weeping Woman (1937), Picasso

Cold glasses depict time
through condensation.
Shaky knees staring across
stained, summer rusted
coffee tables—
our talks similarly
stale, bitter off the lips.

Always knew to never bring
roses for a weeping woman.
A few unwatered days
angry footsteps will shake
shriveled petals gracefully to the ground; a long gaze
shows ripe girls
layered stages of fading
into fruitful women.

Did Dora Maar crush the thorns
of a bouquet when she sat
as his model in despair?
Oil on canvas,
encompassing muse of a sex
blooming/fighting/dying
through history.
Grateful to become that pure
fertilizer for future flowers,
a hopeful world.

*Dora Maar was Pablo Picasso’s mistress who, in 1936, posed as a model for his painting The Weeping Woman.

Garrett Lemery is a full-time student at Flagler College and, as of late, has become immensely inspired by the interactions between his peers and himself against the constantly moving current of coastal life. He believes darkness writes better than light, and that the most moving works of contemporary poetry focus on suppressed desires and wishes we struggle to talk about face-to-face. The words of Margaret Atwood, Anne Sexton, and Liz Robbins have most intimately touched his writing style in the past years.