Still Life, after Richter (Tante Marianne)

A poem reacting to the retrospective of Gerhard Richter at Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris

by LQ McDonald

Tante Marianne

Gerhard Richter, 1965.

like time, i resist

the clean line.

memory being

just a moment.

a tremor

in the hand

rebelling against

the forgetting

to hold it

in the heart.

the gesture

of my nation

was a violence

of light. of believing

that color is the body

of things. but in her

lap i am not yet

baptized to that

grief. in her lap

i am only waiting

for the image

to develop.