George Grosz’s Self-Portrait as Jack the Ripper (1918)
“Painting demands as much cunning,
Malice, and vice as does crime.’
A belief attributed to Degas
The man behind the full
standing mirror aping stalker
is the artist ogling the groin
of his model, his soon-to-be-
wife, dagger clenched in his
hand as if to cut, as if to maim,
while the vain woman, unaware,
admires herself in a handheld
glass as the free standing one
was not enough reflective surface
to define her beauty so tightly
contained by form fitting black tights
and top, no underwear beneath,
almost as if she were a Narcissus
Admiring Herself in Water, a detail
from a larger canvas, a passion play
for willing victims and their killers
as if a violent death were the purest
form of art, the noblest act.
© Alan Catlin
Alan Catlin has recently published several full-length collections of poems including Asylum Garden: after Van Gogh (Dos Madres), Lessons of Darkness (Luchador Press) and Memories (Alien Buddha Press.)
The Loch Raven Review 