STILL LIFE

Fényes Adolf, Mákoskalács (1910)

for Maria, James and Antonia Eliason

 

What will I do with this little still life,

the empty cereal plate, floral pattern

jug of milk and plain butter croissant

on the tablecloth retaining its folds,

shaken that morning from the hot press,

and poppyseed cake on a green dish,

finely glazed Zsolnay it looks like,

waiting to be bitten into, dense

and dark with a million poppy seeds

scattering all over the dining room

if I’m not careful, a bentwood chair

foreshortened against a lilac wall

on which a crucifixion scene hangs

and two other prints off to the side,

Hungarian light in the empty glass

reflecting a window where the Puszta

stretches all the way to the Carpathians,

or reflecting nothing, a painter’s whim,

his desire to bring light to the subject,

to have us notice his eye for things

that day in 1910 in the dining room?