"Alice"

I haven't seen the painting in years,

and as I recall, the cold-

water two-room flat depicted was as stark as it was
when I saw it on television as a kid, although
this picture's plane is colored in acrylic paint.

Within the translucent parameters of the surface,

Alice is standing to the viewer's stage right at the heavy
claw-foot table of the kitchen, where a baked ham sits

at the midpoint, ready to serve, sliced through the bone.

supper table

breakfast table

confessional

newspaper lounge

nucleus of a working man's latest scheme
nexus of bedroom and toilet––  

the hub of her planet.

A common Public Transit Authority issue cap
is seen sitting atop a chest of draws, misplaced

in the kitchen, but convincing, here.

The weighty chest is pressed to the horsehair wall,

the viewer's stage left, adjacent to the narrow interior doorway

to a darkened room as foreign to her now as it has been to the viewer.

Austere in her posture, Alice stands at the table.
At a right angle, a carving knife is held in place

by the grip of her hand, from the apron outward,

the apron, tied in a bow around the waistline

of her housedress, the blade

transfixed toward the open
bedroom doorway, — the portal we assume

leads to somewhere which will never be seen.


recalling the first sight of Leonard Dufresne's "Alice"