Friday, January 22, 2010

Angels, Demons, and Madonnas

Names matter.  Identities too.  At least temporarily,
not all Madonnas are plaster
replicas.  One promotes her eponymous DC;
demands rights to      madonna.com;
she's the one with stretch marks

and little resemblance to THE  Madonna, an icon
long before possessed superstar Raphael,
may have married his lover, model
for La Fornarina (1518), baker's daughter
Margherita Luti, pearl from Sienna,
who posed half naked as the prodigal Raphael's school,
commissioned to paint the Vatican's Sala di Constantino,
grimaced

while doing church work since Raphael was officially engaged
to a prominent cardinal's offspring
who didn't know symbols of love
her fiance left on his canvas,
his tributes to the other woman,

his surreptitious yummy wife, pearly as a cloud
in her husband's sky, a man she could never claim as hers,
his fame, her widowhood,
his name; for the record,
he died a bachelor.

Even her picture, sensuous as any undressed Madonna
would ever be
was meant to hang on someone else's wall.


(c)B. Koplen          10/6/2009

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