Scenes from the Metropolitan Museum of Art
by Amy Munno


I. On the second floor of the museum, a man stands with his arms crossed over his large chest, staring deeply into The Figure 5 in Gold. His eyes are trained on the painting. He is entranced by the 5 repeated larger and larger in gilded vibrations, the round lights shining from the cold steel grey and warm red. He's never read the William Carlos Williams poem that inspired the piece, and so he doesn't think about the meaning of "Bill" and "Carlos" and "WCW" on the canvas. He doesn't need to know the way the poet called the fire truck tense and unheeded or the description of the sirens howling and gongs clanging. These sounds and feelings cannot be separated from who this man is. He is a fireman, and right now he is thinking of his job. He sees in this painting the grey city smoke. He feels the anxiety of driving through traffic jams. He hears the knell of the alarm luring him out to the hell of New York. He smells the dry timber burning. He feels the weight of his air tanks and thick suit. The passion he has for his work cannot be described but in senses. Then, somewhere behind the shaded lines and abstract shapes, he sees the soot-covered face of the child in that room he had checked just 5 minutes before, the tiny girl left on the second floor of the burning walk-up. He sees that limp child in his left arm, her green stuffed dog under his right, and her lungs refusing the clean air at the ambulance. He hears his wife repeating that it was not his fault in the dark of their bedroom, his face pressed into the soft pillow he rocks in his hands. And suddenly he is back to now, standing far across from this painting, the figure 5 coming at him in pulses of gold.

II. The history teacher looks through the American Art section and finally finds Washington Crossing the Delaware. The work towers over him at almost twice his height. The teacher is very proper and refined in his blazer and bow tie. His hair feels thin through his hands as he strokes the peppered strands in agitation. Although he will never admit it, this painting bothers him completely. He stands pretending to admire it in front of his inner-city class, trying to act patriotic and approving. But he knows many things about this painting. He knows that a native German painted the American classic. He sees the Black sitting at Washington's knee as some token, some expected representation. He knows the boat is the wrong size and shape for the time and place, and Washington would have fallen overboard if he had stood in the boat that way. And worst of all, the Stars and Stripes flag did not exist until 6 months after that American victory. But there is a mystique about this painting; it is practically a national monument. There is a respect for American history that he can see in his students' eyes as they stand before the war scene. He has never once seen that look from his students as he stands at the front of his classroom, taller than life, teaching them momentous truths. He tries every day to pass on his love for history, to reach just one poor child. He is being outdone by this ludicrous work. And that makes him all the more bitter.

III. Degas's The Dance Class hangs on the wall of the Nineteenth Century European Paintings section, where this elderly woman comes every Tuesday afternoon. She is smiling at the painting like she does every week, the soft silk of her grey hair gently falling out of a sloppy bun on her head. She is remembering so long ago when she danced ballet as a little girl in the basement of an old apartment building, nothing like the rich and beautiful sage room on the canvas. The mirror in Degas's world covers one of the great walls, but there was no mirror in her basement studio-only the calls of the young teacher as a reflection of the dance, telling her to straighten or bend or flex. The elderly woman could only imagine what she looked like, her tight thin legs lifting her up and down across the floor, into the arms of a neighborhood boy whom she liked and later dated in high school, but who was called to war in Germany and never came back. She remembers that the basement floor was uneven and hard under her thin slippers. The Degas girls are frilly and white, angelic in their tutus and choker necklaces, and she wishes she had looked like that. Despite the beautiful girls and their elegance, the elderly woman is always the most interested in the old man standing on the right of the painting, hands on the top of a tall cane, looking over the class with a mystery about him. Is it the owner of the studio? Is it Degas himself? The elderly woman wonders each Tuesday. The man reminds her of her own grandfather, who paid for her classes. She would return home after the lessons, and there he would be, waiting at the door, not letting her change until she danced in the small living room and showed him the newest twirls and turns. His eyes would dance with her, and his smile would make her forget the soreness in every muscle. When he passed on, the lessons stopped. She never again felt as free a feeling as when she had danced as a girl. When her daughter tells her it is time to go from this painting, she is swaying back and forth, eyes closed, hearing Schubert move through her like a swell of youth, watching the smile of her grandfather as he pulls her into him and laughs.

IV. The Four Witches of Dürer is engraved in fine greys and black. The witches walk a circle around a skull. They are naked with their hair pulled up off their faces in 1400s fashion. In the museum, a misogynist is frowning at them, disgusted at their ugliness-their rounded rearends and bulging thighs, the pear-shaped breasts and the small protruding belly of the witch facing him. The misogynist stands off to the side, his arms folded tightly across his ribs. He quickly identifies the four witches. One witch is his mother-in-law who comes to visit every weekend, circling the house with her negative comments, disappointed at how he provides (or doesn't provide) for her daughter. One witch is his boss, who yesterday, wearing her blue power suit with the short skirt, sat him down to tell him he was passed over for the promotion he deserved. One witch is his neighbor who has a different man over every night, who burns candles in the windows and lets her black cat leave dead chipmunks on his steps. The last witch is his therapist; she is the witch on the left, staring across the circle half-lidded, looking superior and condescending. He feels a headache coming on across the tight muscles of his forehead.

V. It is the largest painting he has ever seen, this teenage boy who stands back among tourists and art lovers walking stop and start through the exhibit. It is Joan of Arc, and Joan leans against a crooked tree, staring off the canvas as the voices ring in her ears. Ghostly shapes are hidden in the brush, clearly visible to the boy because he has been studying the painting for so long. He wonders if these shapes are visible only to him. And then he imagines that they are. Joan is beautiful; her crumpled dress falls in tired loose folds over her chest. Her thick dark hair is pulled around the back of her neck. Her neck is both graceful and strong. She is out among the wilderness, looking almost wild herself. But it is the look in her eyes that is so attractive; she is lost, and the boy wants to help her, but he cannot catch her gaze no matter which angle he uses to approach the canvas. If he could only be there to hold her outstretched hand, to tell her that her fight will liberate her country. He would hold her in the shadows of this forest garden and stroke her smooth face, tasting her fear on her full lips. He would stare into the depth of her soul. He would kill an Englishman for her if it meant she would love him. This boy, who has only recently begun to experience real desire for female touch, who just last week felt the tongue of the neighbor girl he has watched across the street, now stands in the museum in perfect desire for a 121-year-old woman made of oil and brush fibers.

VI. Balsam Apple and Vegetables is food in still life. The chef stares at the eggplant, the tomatoes, the cabbage, the gourd, the thick green leaves covering the canvas. He thinks of the stupidity of painting food when there are so many beautiful scenes yet to capture. Yes, the texture is very accurate and detailed, and the painted light hits the eggplant perfectly to reflect its firmness and the smooth bend of purple black. But how can it compare to reflections of leaves like fire in Vermont autumn waters or the infinite depth of Rocky Mountain snow caps? The chef thinks that a real artist captures majesty. The chef understands more about food than anyone he knows, and he considers himself a better artist than this painter. He moves his girth around the most celebrated of New York kitchens, focusing on great creativity under the hottest of conditions, carefully slicing and shaving and carving to make the most beautiful 4-star plate for expectant and critical customers. Each dinner is his masterpiece, his best attempt at perfect presentation. He focuses again on the painting. He realizes that in 20 minutes his art is digested, forked off the china in careless sweeps-his canvas tossed in the bottom of a busboy's dirty pan. And here this painting sits, day after day on this wall, tourists from every nation stopping and considering and admiring the vegetables in still life in the all-important Met. Finding that the product of his creativity only lasts for a passing moment, the chef is suddenly consumed by depression.

VII. A pregnant woman shifts her weight to her left foot, trying to feel comfortable while considering Cassatt's Mother and Child. She is very close to the frame, and the unborn child- her first-is closer still. A flower print hangs over her roundedness, the soft curves of breasts and belly hide the great weight of her eighth month. The pregnant woman is looking into the face of the mother and sees nothing that can help her understand. The mother's expression is placid; the soft cheeks and pursed rose lips say little about her. The mother wears a cream and powder blue dressing gown. She is in profile, looking off the left side of the canvas, very composed. The mother's infant son stands naked on her right, his arm around her shoulder and her arm around his rear. The pregnant woman looks into the face of the infant and again finds nothing. The infant is also looking off the canvas. The pregnant woman decides that the infant is almost bored. But yet that's not it. His expression is hard to define. She comes up with content and settles on it. And she still searches the painting for any detail that will help her. She is desperately trying to find out how it feels to be a mother, how it feels to have that child outside you, warm and fleshy. She is disappointed in the painting and turns to move away. And then she sees the mother's hand. Between her index finger and her thumb, the mother is holding with gentlest pressure the four fingers of her son. She allows his thumb to rest on the tip of hers, his soft pink skin disappearing in a stroke into her skin. The pregnant woman is now aware of the beauty of touch from the faintest wisps of a brush.

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Amy Munno is a full-time managing editor and holds an MA in English from William Paterson University. She is co-editor of the quarterly print magazine The Unknown Writer and member of the Haiku Society of America. Her writing is forthcoming or published in such places as the Puckerbrush Review, Mad Poets Review, and Elysian Fields Quarterly.

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by Ellen Hewlett

Hold Steady the Raft
by B.A. Myint

Cold Milk
by Gina Perfetto

Scenes from the Metropolitan Museum of Art
by Amy Munno

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