Madonna Lactans
After a painting by Mateo Pérez de Alesio, 1590
Oil on wood panel
33 x 44 cm
Fundación Pedro y Angélica de Osma
Lima, Perú
1.
The woman’s hooded eyes
slope downward from within
a dark context—a whisper of gauze
veils the clarity of her vision.
She coils her attention around the infant form.
He, unperturbed, meets our gaze and
reaches confidently for the breast.
2.
I drift in warm pools of parallax.
The baby, there, beside me peaceful
and solid like an oak panel. My mind
wraps itself in black silk,
the voices, receded—
as if to seek their sustenance elsewhere.
3.
The woman in the picture exposes her left breast,
its flesh still micaceous and smooth,
and strings the nipple like an arrow in its bow.
The child lays his hands on her as upon
a bowl of raw clay
shaping its supple essence
to the curving form of his palms.
4.
When I used the pump to try to increase
my supply, I often suffered.
I needed the warm water from the shower
and urgent massages to loosen the frequent clogs.
I worked and squeezed through the burning pain
until I could see the bulging duct—the culprit,
like an enemy erupting from deep within
my chest. I thought I needed strawshard
to pierce the disturbance.
But then I would summon the latch
and burst flesh between my fingers
into a thin stream of relief,
draining two days’ worth of trapped milk,
a wing blooming in the wrong direction.
5.
The painter prepares the surface first, planing,
sanding, burnishing. And then layers the thin
skins of gesso—the sticky essence of the earth—
marble dust, water, and hide glue. After it dries, he
conjures form: a young mother and her infant son.
They bloom in rosy gradients of azuritas, cal viva,
bermellones, oropimente, albayalde, and cochinilla.
Then he clothes the pigments
with the textures of time.
6.
These are the intimacies
of art, that they may pollinate
your good health.
7.
Once the conditions were met,
the iconography secured,
the earth mined open,
I held your raw church like a jaw
and her myth boiled through me
becoming meadow, a blue basin of stone,
a ripe cloud approaching
to quench the depths of your system.
Sonya Wohletz is a writer whose work brings together image, history, and landscapes. Her work has appeared in Latin American Literary Review, Revolute, Roanoke Review, and others. Her first collection of poetry, One Row After/Bir Sira Sonra, was published by First Matter Press in 2022. She is a Pushcart Prize nominee.
Amethyst Review 