Of course I would pick this one—
cylindrical baskets and buckets 
in teetering stacks—Reds! Golds! Greens, 
that navy blue one plunked 
on top of a wastebasket 
with a lid like a slice of orange—
I could go on, and I will. 
Everything’s unwieldy—turquoise 
cooling fan and a black-and-gray coil of rope 
that could be a hula hoop magically 
passing through the blades. 
Silver teapot hanging from a hook, 
poised to pour and miss 
the dangling mugs below. 
Then I notice the background is 
fill-in-the-blank white—partly squeezed, 
partly cut with a knife—
Let’s say we’re writing this together. 
What does background mean to you? 
Sorry, my mother just showed up. Here she is, 
weaving through the vacancy, 
rearranging skillets, straightening 
the tower of pastel lampshades. 
My mother, folding up chaos, 
putting it away like laundry—
I never thought that applied to me. 
My mother, my other—let’s leave her in. 
Let her sweep and mop. I’m busy, too, 
tidying up this poem. 

Author’s Note:

“Let’s say we’re writing this together” is a line from the poem “Photograph” by Philip Levine, first published in Poetry (April 1994, pp. 15-16).

I first encountered Erik Mattijssen’s art in Enjoy some Damn Fine Art (14 December 2016). As I recall, this blog link was shared with me in a poetry class I was taking:
https://enjoysomedamnfineart.blogspot.com/2016/12/erik-mattijssen-household-supplies-2016.html

Household Supplies (gouache painting, 2016) by Erik Mattijssen
NOG Collection, Stedelijk Museum Schiedam

Copyrighted © 2016 by Erik Mattijssen. All rights reserved.
Appears here with permission from the artist.

Erik Mattijssen

(born 1957) lives and works in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Over the years and on his numerous travels, he has collected images of thousands of objects and materials, from puppet theater dolls to types of wallpaper, and from stacked plastic buckets to lace rugs. To create his art, Mattijssen works with gouache, pencil, and pastel chalk on paper of all sizes. He likes to focus on things that are easily overlooked, and his compositions are densely populated, consisting of buckets, vases, food, cans, furniture, and other objects arranged in mysterious ways.

For Mattijssen’s curriculum vitae and comprehensive lists of exhibitions, as well as online galleries of his artworks and photos of his studio spanning 40 years, please visit his website:
http://www.erikmattijssen.nl/content.htm

See also Erik Mattijssen in Paris (2018) and Berlin (2021), the artist’s blog (in Dutch with English translation):
https://erikmattijssenparisberlin.com

Eileen Pettycrew’s

poems have been published or are forthcoming in CALYX Journal, Cave Wall, The Ekphrastic Review, New Ohio Review, ONE ART, SWWIM Every Day, and elsewhere. In 2022 she was one of two runners-up for the Prime Number Magazine Award for Poetry and a finalist for the New Letters Award for Poetry. Currently, she is pursuing an MFA at Pacific University. A Pushcart Prize nominee, Eileen lives in Portland, Oregon.