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  • Portrait of Ana Dali
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Portrait of Ana Dali

Eddie Gibbons

Ana Dali, Salvador’s sister,
shown here in an ominous frock,
eloped with an amorous easel
to the melting apartment block.
She waves through a hole in a mirror
sewn into her brother’s smock.
As she drinks the breeze from the Pyrenees,
Time drips from the village clock.

Her pigtails stretch from her window
to Cadaques and the port of Bilbao.
Over sun-speltered Andalucia,
through measureless meadows of cows.
Her lemonade has developed amnesia.
Her maraccas engage in a row.
Her Mercedes Benz is ablaze at both ends.
She is wearing a watch that says NOW!

An orangepeel twist forms her fingers,
her mouth is a door left ajar.
The Atlantic cascades from her shoulders
where Cervantes tilts at the stars.
Her nose is the shape of the town of Cadiz.
Her cheeks form the base of a vase.
Her hair is coiffured in a whirlwind of birds.
Her eyes are Flamenco guitars.

Acrylic skies frame her figure,
painted with luminous grace.
She gazes at astral horizons
in the infinite sadness of space.
She sits in a gilded garden,
a paranoid, marigold place.
She is humming a tune to the Catalan moon
through a veil of vermilion lace.


Eddie Gibbons

from Stations of the Heart (Thirsty Books, 1999) and included in A Twist of Lime Street (Red Squirrel Press, 2013)

Reproduced by permission of the author.

Tags:

art poems inspired by artworks portraits sisters Spain Surrealism women
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Eddie Gibbons

Eddie Gibbons is a poet with five published collections. He lives in Aberdeenshire.
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