WHISTLING SHADE

Fall - Winter 2015: The Horror Issue

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Picasso's "Two Sleeping Peasants"

by Marc Tretin

Not her knees opened wide and slightly bent,
nor her neck sacrificially exposed,
nor her sweet soaked blouse that never meant
to show her breast, nor her lover juxtaposed
against the hay, his cockeyed hat floating off
his head, nor his hands (huge, brown-but almost red)
nor his face composed by soft hints of
sleep, but his right thigh, where she lays her head,
(in deep dreams, despite the ocher sun)
that he will not move, fearing she would wake,
that shows a love that runs from the furrowed ground,
and through the baled and bound hay, so snugly done,
and through the shimmering fields they have raked
in this heat, their heat, not making a sound.