Eden Chicken
The Arnolfini Portrait
I.
We meet in the doorway, unlit for drama.
I don’t know why he thought I was wearing blue,
how do ghosts go again?
Jenever slicks his finger bones to the brush, every stroke
follows a vein. I hope
to loosen his tongue.
Two turn towards:
their pale faces us smoothed by oil, no life lines
left to be cut by the fates,
but time cracks the immortalised still.
My eye to her full hand,
white flesh and bone bunching cloth
which covers more flesh
which covers more bone.
A mother, I call her, but I am wrong:
he tells me that I am wrong.
A bride, I offer, and find no answer in his silent shrug.
He sees her knuckles as if wooden joints,
to her face he delicately anoints.
Alla prima, he says before I ask.
Her hand is placed in his.
I tire of watching him paint wall.
Take note instead of what is there;
why the oranges, their uneven skin half shadowed?
They’ll remain forgotten until
penetrating stink. Only one candle lit?
How many false figures can one view contain —
no, she is real,
flesh and bone and cloth and (presumably) blood.
The dog has not moved. I dislike its softness,
remember that she is not a mother.
There’s a saint that visits her bedside,
they have the most pious pillow talk.
I leave them with ease, als ich kan.
II.
We see each other once more, by happenstance
but he memories it in small strokes nonetheless.
I compliment his red hood
and he names the figures far before us.
Then we turn
and watch the river move in silence.
III.
I will look in the mirror for years to come I will wear bright blue to stand out against the shadows but when I try to match his shade none seem quite right & I will try oranges one day because I know I would delight in peeling them & getting the pith & juice on my fingers & that sweet/tart taste I imagine they have & everyone seems to think love is sharing an orange & everyone shares that Cope poem even when they’re the only fruit & I will look in the mirror for years to come & I will think the same thoughts often agonising about how feminised my actions are perceived to be & how vain how self-obsessed how narcissistic but what was it Berger said again it’s not vanity thus morally condemning the woman whose nakedness you had depicted for your own pleasure my reflection is the model but I am the artist & so to stare at self is not vanity & I will look in the mirror for years to come but out of the corner of my eye to see myself as a passerby or setting up mirrors too small to show more than a fragment at a time I will continue seeing myself & being myself in fragments shards of me pointed; dart-like; definite I am a boy crying Woolf & I understand my hand with its red knuckles & dirty nails I understand the lines of my jaw & neck I understand my eyes left then right with their greypurple stains & sick-man’s veins I understand the shadows & highlights of my nose I understand where my meets-in-the-middle eyebrow goes I understand the corners of my lips like little dips & I understand the few darker hairs twitching just above the right I know my body well but when I stare & strip in full I don’t understand any more so I will look in his mirror for years to come & I will understand the absence in my presence as a barely formed figure in some sweet shade of blue.
Eden Chicken
Eden Chicken, born as Eden Gray, is a queer poet whose work generally focusses on hybridity — of form, of identity, and of existence in the natural world. They have recently graduated from the MA Poetry course at University of East Anglia where they increasingly experimented to play with language and form, creating a distinct voice, and have since relocated to Sheffield. Their work has been published by Sentire