right hand pointing

 

     
  St. Vincent

Sandra Agricola
 

 

 

Jesus, Mary, Mother, and Joseph
what a way to end things--
a bullet to the chest
beside a haystack in the yellow fields
he loved to paint,
and poor Dr. Gachet,
as neurotic as Vincent,
frantically works to save him.
 
In pain and then not.
Outside the Olive Trees
drip with rain.
A pale green face
a crimson chest
two days later
the hungry earth
swallows everything.
Think, please, of Vincent’s
lit candle placed in the middle
of an empty chair.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  
Sandra Agricola is the author of two collections of poetry,  Master Bedroom Poems and White Mercedes.  A new chapbook, Yellow, is available from Mercy Seat Press.  Her poems have appeared in The Georgia Review, Denver Quarterly, Awakenings Review, The Ohio Review, and elsewhere.  She received a B.A. in Art History from The University of Alabama and an M.A. in English from Ohio University.  In 1989 she was awarded an Individual Artist’s Grant from The Mississippi Arts Commission.  She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.