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Denise Bundred is writing a narrative collection of poetry about the final years of Vincent van Gogh. Her poems have appeared in magazines including Envoi, Under the Radar, Magma, The Dark Horse, Prole, London Grip, and Ink Sweat and Tears. She has poems in various anthologies including the Hippocrates Prize Anthologies and Reading Poets Anthology (Two Rivers Press). She has an MA in Creative Writing and Litany of a Cardiologist, was published by Against the Grain Press in 2020.
Self-portrait with Palette
Asylum of St. Paul, Provence, 1889
Five-weeks-thin
spectre pale
from yet another crisis
you churn brushstrokes
of thick-laid cobalt
and Prussian blue
(like the lair of an
imaginary beast)
around the precision
of your drained
and shrunken face.
Ashen skin outlines
a hollowed temple.
Vibrant orange hair
and beard
enhance
the contrast.
You challenge me
to witness
your affliction.
Palette of emerald
cerulean and citron —
pigments begged
from your brother
in fluent French
on cream paper
to show Theo
you’ve recovered —
will work again.
Brushes — like rods
in your hand —
to deflect the lightning.
© Denise Bundred
Kintsugi Rescue
I knew that one could break one’s legs and that could get better
but I didn’t know one could break one’s brain and that got better too.
To Theo van Gogh, 1889
a ‘not just any pot
or vase’
balanced on the edge
of a table, shelf
or ledge
falls —
a mind
can splinter
like
fine porcelain
or a favourite cup
grind limonite
mix with oil
smear yellow ochre
into cracks
plaster over clefts
bind
together
shattered
fragments
hold
with golden lines
of sunlight
when this
is not enough
add liquid
lapis lazuli
with finger
palette knife
or brush
a canvas of wheat
and sun and sky
leans against a wall
© Denise Bundred
Still life with Irises
Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam
Vicious yellow pot — distorted as if by alchemy
in a furnace of sulphur.
Startling lemon background — Delacroix
used just such a citron in a basket of flowers
when he went to the country with George Sand.
Simple as breathing, each stem settles itself
in a ripple of Prussian blue.
Burdened by excess, some stalks break.
The future can only coruscate and burn.
Red lake fades. What remains is a tang of purple.
© Denise Bundred