Knock, knock, Velázquez. Can I come in?
I’m standing behind the man at the door. On the threshold
wearing my mantilla and cotton peasant dress.
Will you put me in the painting with the rest?
I’d like to warm my skeleton hands
in the heat of Las Meninas.
It’s so brown in here I might be in a desert
or a forest. Or be a woman from Mexico.
I might finish the canvas for you,
show you what we gave up,
how we filled the sacrificial bowl
with blood and with vision, with giving and with taking.
I was thinking jaguar, I was washing paws.
The spots do not come out from a garment of eyes.