She’s wearing a dream. Let’s call her Arlette. 
		A pink rose coiffes her cleavage, 
	waist, hair. Monsieur sits next to her, 
though a penumbra of the artist’s brush. He’s 
		viewing his milieu, opera glasses 
	snug to eyes. Paris views Arlette. 
Once, Mother lay in bed gazing at the Renoir pair: 
		 starched shirt, white gloves, 
	waistcoat, mustache, goatee. They called 
Arlette’s over-gown à la polonaise, fabric 
		looped like drapery over petticoats—
	layer upon layer. Like paint. Like Mother’s 
bedroom for over forty years, once my bedroom, 
		her dressers once filled 
	with my clothes, then hers, now mine. 
Her linens in my closets, opera glasses 
		in their stiff brown leather case 
	in the same drawer where she kept them. 
La Loge hangs on a wall in my house 
		where I can gaze at the couple 
	from my bed like Mother did. 
What did she think of Arlette—the way her brown 
		curls flirt toward her eyes? 
	Her face lustrous pale and smoothed 
with rice powder, as Mother’s—puffed 
		with Estée Lauder. The baton 
	rises, the overture is about to begin. 
Arlette whispers, “Sweet dreams.” 
		Mother has already gone. 

La Loge (The Theatre Box) (oil on canvas, 1874) by French Impressionist painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841-1919) is held by Courtauld Institute of Art in the collection at The Courtauld Gallery in London, UK. Image above was downloaded from Wikimedia.

For details about the painting, see “Renoir at the Theatre: Looking at La Loge” (link retrieved on 11 January 2024):
https://courtauld.ac.uk/gallery/exhibitions/renoir-at-the-theatre-looking-at-la-loge/

Judith Terzi

is the author of Museum of Rearranged Objects (Kelsay Books, 2018), as well as six chapbooks, including Now, Somehow (Finishing Line Press, 2022), poems about confronting a pandemic, cancer, and other health-related urgencies. Her poetry has appeared widely in journals and anthologies and has been featured on BBC Radio 3. She taught French and English for many years in Southern California as well as in Algiers, Algeria.

Author’s website: https://www.sharingtabouli.com/