The Acentos Review May 2012
 
Bio Eva Maria Saavedra was born and raised in New Jersey where she currently resides. She received a B.A. from SUNY Purchase in creative writing and an M.F.A in writing and translation from Columbia’s School of the Arts. Her poetry has appeared in Callaloo and has recently been published in Catch-Up’s Emerging Writers Issue. You can follow her insane ramblings on life, writing, and music on Twitter @evamsaavedra.
3 Poems After “Untitled” 1969 by Rothko The canvas is painted half brown the other beige. 
Here is where these two colors meet, are allowed 
to touch slightly, only for a moment. And you’ll share
this with me, but not without saying really, dear, I’d rather
be drinking, rather be at home undressing you. Say it,
in the same way you told me you didn’t want a half-breed
baby. Let me take note of my inadequacies, the traits
I’ll never posses that the women you had before me did—all those long
legs and blonde hair, their tiny wrists and waists. Remind 
me there’s nothing stopping you from leaving, that the places 
we meet are backseats, your ratty couch, the mattress 
in your bedroom, of how there is just color here. After Market Scene, 1930 by Diego Rivera “And that is when the truth dawned on me: I had manacled my life to someone 
who didn’t want to be my partner.” Jennifer Baumgardner, “My Illegitimate Family”, Real Simple, March 2008 Her hair is neat, braided. Arms stretch out, stretch upwards
and in her hands she holds a basket filled with fish. 
I take note of her head’s tilt, the ease with which she looks
up toward his Spanish lightness. I am left imagining the possibility
of her face, thinking she is only worth this gesture. Two nights ago we got so drunk and in the morning
this is all you can remember: the outline of my figure
bent over the toilet, your coming. What I remember: the way you initiated sex
that night—our hands clasped, you sit me down on the wine-stained
couch, stand in front of me and I lift my head up to you. 
Perhaps she looks at him the way I found myself looking 
at you in that moment.

No wonder, no admiration, only a look that speaks to you poor bastard
or in other words your bed isn’t the only one I know.
Realize there is only one grey fish in her basket, that like her the less
I offer you the more my worth and this is all that matters. 
You stumbled to your knees to take off my shoes. I force 
a smile though in our silence I thought— Pull away from me, 
pull away immediately as reflex, as reacting to an accidental burn. After the Japanese Footbridge at Giverny, ca 1922 by Monet I’m at the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston
standing in front of a Monet thinking
that somewhere hidden underneath 
all of these layers of paint is a footbridge. 
There are women around me
and I step aside for a moment to let them take
a look. They’re talking to one another of lunch,
their grandchildren, when one of them 
goes how ugly. I remember the first time I saw this particular 
painting, the thick art history textbooks 
we weren’t allowed to take out of the classroom.
How after learning that Monet was going blind
when he worked on this piece I placed
my right hand over the picture, started
to move it back and forth. Being here,
it’s now more than ever that I want to touch 
it, offer it some type of affection.

There must be something said for his attempt,
for my attempts at forgetting that when I was younger
the only time my mother reached for me was to hit me.