Poetry by Margot Guilhot Delsoldato
REPETITION, OR NUDE BEFORE A MIRROR

Bonnard, it was said, painted from memory.
The bluish-brackish brightness
of a spoiled morning – or was it a winter’s
afternoon? catches on
Marthe’s chair de poule just as well
as another woman’s
and the fact of this, somehow,
does not lessen one
or the other.
Marthe/Not-Marthe runs circles around me,
the blood rushing to her cheeks
from a small death just before
or a funny joke going over my head.
What a callous thing to be –
an intimist
to make me think of things
like that, in the twentieth century
wing, and marry them with the spots
in my vision from its faulty,
still-wanting light.

Margot Guilhot Delsoldato is an Italian-French writer and filmmaker from Parma. She holds a BA in English Literature and History from Trinity College, where she is now completing an M.Phil. in Creative Writing. She writes fiction, criticism, and screenplays across both English and her native language, Italian.

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