The Barnes Holy Trinity

These galleries careen their absurdist religion into my lens,
pile gilded Renaissance canvases in my camera roll
like unkempt teeth: Rousseau’s tiger crash-
landing across still-lifes, minor and major meant to merge
as one discordant chorus, the snap of the Orient married
to the lilting medieval. A man needs three things in life,
Van Gogh’s sailor whispers from a corner, cyan
eyes pinned against the crowds:

            1) kitchen utensils,
            2) Impressionist women, and
            3) Christ’s crucifixion.

All bare things to be nailed, framed against each
other, as if somehow proximity could overcome
the difference between worship and desecration, sanctify
the bodies of ladles and pasta strainers. As if Christ
and Eve could ever gaze upon each other without regret.
It must be a gift, really, to carry yourself through the world
this way. To hold an iron spork and God in the same
palm, turn yourself into a roomful of paradoxes—
a Buddhist statue embracing its plunderer, a spatula
winking in the limelight. To pry open these floor-
boards and find a field of sky.

Ashley Wang is a high school senior living in Lawrenceville, NJ. Her work appears or is forthcoming in Black Warrior Review, Gigantic Sequins, Up The Staircase Quarterly, Freezeray Poetry, CHEAP POP, and elsewhere. A 2022 &2023 YoungArts Winner and Best New Poets nominee, she reads for Palette Poetry. She tweets occasionally @AshWang20.