Annie Boutelle is founder of the Poetry Center at Smith College, and she teaches in the English Department there.
She has published poems in various journals, including The Georgia Review, The Hudson Review, and Poetry. Her first book of poems is Becoming Bone: Poems on the Life of Celia Thaxter from the University of Arkansas Press. Her second, Nest of Thistles, won the 2005 Samuel French Morse Prize from Northeastern University Press. She currently holds the position of Grace Hazard Conkling Poet-in-Residence at Smith College. For more information, see annieboutelle.com.
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Caravaggio’s Fillide 1598
"My tiger," I call you. "My queen."
Seventeen years, and only partly mine.
As intimate with prelates as with artists,
the strongest woman I've known. Fillide
Melandroni, name that sounds like palaces,
perfumed flowers, a star-strewn sky. How
did a snotty street kid from Siena become
Rome's most expensive courtesan? And
what won't you give me? Almond eyes,
lavish curls, soft breast, and a readiness
to look the Pope himself square in the eye
and not flinch. The others are bagatelle.
I'll paint you as St. Catherine, robed in black
velvet and light, and you'll finger my sword,
reddened still, as you gaze out at the viewers
to come. I'll paint you as the Magdalen
—humble Martha at your side—light
tumbling down like a waterfall and choosing
only you. And I'll paint you as Judith, at
the exact moment when Holofernes knows
his neck is being sawed through by a woman
whose competence may be in doubt, but
whose commitment is absolute. The last
images in his brain will be the voluptuous
red of his tent, pearl earring with its tiny
black bow, and your determined face.
Victorious Cupid
by Caravaggio, oil on canvas, 156 x 113cm,1601-02
commissioned by Vincenzo Guistiniani
For such a distinguished and discreet
banker, nothing is impossible, so I
can offer what will both shock and
charm—instant irresistible seduction
of viewer by a dazzling twelve-year-old
boy who gathers all the light to his sweet
flesh. Unabashed Cecco, bald-ass-naked,
with his stagey wings, clutches his arrows
and prances over the welter of expensive
objects tossed at his feet: violin, astronomical
globe, crown and laurel wreath, a sea
of white linen. Also, a black and glowing
cuirass (could this be pun?). I threw in tons
of V's to honor my patron—the huge one
on the sheet music, the wide inverted
V of Cupid's parted legs, the wedge of linen
that points V-like straight to his childlike
dick with its pretty red tip, the V of his
left leg, coyly twisted back and resting
on a marble bench. I wanted him to look
mischievous, cheeky, unafraid, offering
his whole bold naked self to the viewer.
(The hand behind his back points to his
buttocks.) I wanted him naughty and hot,
cheek and lip flushed—even his long toes,
his knee and nipple, all eager, reddening.
And the truly sexual moment is when
the dark tip of a wing slides onto his
bare leg, and feather and flesh conjoin.
Let the sophisticated Romans fall, one
by one, under the rough spell of this boy
of the streets, reckless, gorgeous, mine.
The Taking of Christ
by Caravaggio, oil on canvas, 133.5 x 169.5 cm, 1602
commissioned by Ciriaco Mattei
The three men huddle under the shelter
of a red cloak that can't protect and they
know it. Their hands know it too—John's
raised in panic, trying to stave off what
is coming, while the thick fingers of Judas
grasp his master's shoulder, as he leans
close to deliver the kiss, or perhaps to pull
back? Christ's hands are calm, interlaced,
surrendered. And what rules is confusion,
darkness, muscle, steel, crude force, as
three sturdy soldiers, helmeted, armored,
anonymous (only their nose tips show),
form the disciplined wedge that pushes,
relentless, toward Christ. And the fourth
one, onlooker, our man at Gethsemane,
raises a pathetic lantern over the wave
of bodies, his right hand lifting the lamp
as delicately as a painter holds a brush,
his eyes ravenous, missing nothing.
Saint John the Baptist
by Caravaggio, oil on canvas, 129 X 95 cm.,1602
commissioned by Ciriaco Matthei
Sensual and, yes, loving, that close
embrace between Cecco and the ram
whose curled and rippling horn leans
on the naked boy's wrist and leads
our eyes back to his ruddy cheek,
spiraling curls, the proud and eager
smile. He looks directly at us, as if
being kissed by a ram is an everyday
affair, while the ram gazes at no one
but him, and its two front legs, poised
primly together, point to the boy's
scrotum and penis. The light is
evening, lush, the trees and bushes
disappearing into the dark—flutter
of green leaf or a twig-like stem
distracting us from the tossed fabrics
—his red cloak, tumbled bed sheet,
the brown fur pelt on which he leans.
As his lower back and buttock touch
fur, Giorgione's ghost slides in to make
it a ménage à trois, and the boy's toes
brace themselves on the forest floor.
Burial of Saint Lucy
by Caravaggio, oil on canvas ,408 X 300cm,1608
commissioned by the Senate of Syracuse
I allow the cool silver light to slide off the main
figures—two giant grave-diggers with massive
trunks of leg, sweat pouring off their muscles, close
enough for you to smell them. And while the light
hopes for nothing, it will gather you in, accidental
witness to the strange calm that cradles the corpse.
The tidy slit of the throat. Her arm still reaching
out to you beneath the archway of the diggers' legs.
Head thrown back, like Lena's in The Death
of the Virgin, but now face is mask as the silver
light touches chin, nose, eyebrow, almost like
a ritual baptism, and I give Lucy as companion
the old grieving woman from The Beheading
of John—she once again will bow her head and
cover her wrinkled cheeks, but this time she gets
to kneel. And I build a stone archway even larger
than the one in Malta, and I let it rise till it
touches the uppermost corner of canvas, and then
even the laborers look miniscule, and the corpse
tinier still, but the space that belongs to God, not
men, has room at last to breathe, sing, mourn.