Blood Water Paint by Joy McCullough

Author:Joy McCullough
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Young Readers Group
Published: 2018-03-06T05:00:00+00:00

49.

Judith is not careful,

no pure and virtuous woman.

She would not let a man

shove her down,

banish her from the studio

only to call her back again

to be a prop.

It’s not that I’ve abandoned

Susanna

(I couldn’t)

but more than that:

a thrumming surges

through my veins

since Tino showed his hand.

Something fiery,

fierce, impassioned.

Echoes of Judith,

widow of Bethulia.

My mother’s Judith.

As with Susanna,

the men get her wrong.

Father’s Judith cradles

a pristine severed head

like the baby she never knew

she longed for.

Allori’s porcelain-faced warrior

wears not a speck of blood

as she displays the captain’s head

like a basket of fresh-cut flowers.

Caravaggio’s Judith shows

vague concern as she glides

her blade through a tender cut of meat.

The men do not paint the blood.

But blood’s the heart of Judith.

My mother did not hold back

on the blood when she told me

Judith’s truth.

How can anyone capture her

without understanding

the horror of her actions,

the strength it took,

the stains that stayed forever?

How does the body’s life force

leave its vessel while

the heart still beats

but the end has begun?

I’m only guessing—

I’m no da Vinci

yet I know the heart is powerful

and so the blood must arc

in great, triumphal bursts.

It must splatter Judith’s breast,

her servant’s face.

This is no moment of passion.

This is war.

I paint the blood.

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