For Suzanne Valadon who Painted Nudes, Or, On Trying to Take a Dog for An Evening Walk

Dance at Bougival, Pierre-Auguste Renoir 1882-1883


In this painting of summer smolder,
a chap in cap, workman shirt blue,

is leading, spinning you, Suzanne, a woman
with a white petticoat fume. They tried

to lock you in the eighteenth century. You did
what only men previously did,

your curved eye brows like brush strokes,
like lines you blazed in history:

a woman, leg out over the edge
of a bathtub;

a woman, reclining, securing
her hat;

a woman, standing, feet spread
firmly with a hand mirror;

a woman, foot on a stool, preparing
for a wash.

What I’m saying is what irony within this
frame, you hidden under a red bonnet. Were you

wondering if women could ever win? After Warren,
I wondered it, too. Just yesterday,

my neighbor, the Drain Commissioner,
rolled in from out of town, barefoot and shirtless,

scotch in hand, and crossed our street—fireworks
exploding, to tell me: I hear you paint

nudes. I paint nudes. I’m actually a nudist. Do
you want to show each other our nudes?

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Janine Certo is the author of Elixir, winner of the New American Poetry Prize and the Lauria/Frasca Poetry Prize (New American Press and Bordighera Press, 2021). A winner of Nimrod’s Pablo Neruda Prize for Poetry, her poems appear or are forthcoming in The Cincinnati Review, The Greensboro Review, Poetry Northwest, and Shenandoah. She is an associate professor at Michigan State University. You can find her at janinecertopoet.com.