Bearded Man, by Amedeo Modigliani
Your mother, Ekaterina Gadze, wanted you to become a priest. Your father drank, clubbed away at shoes in the basement. As a boy, one arm shorter than the other, you wet your bed and dreamed of robbing banks for love. I see you laughing over a cup of tea, bandit. I see you writing children’s rhymes, wearing the slickest boots, supple, diligent. When were you convinced that death was the answer to your questions? When your father pounded another nail into another stranger’s sole? It could have been different. So and so might not have died of cholera, your father might have won big and come home flush. You could have kept your pony, the one that ate the bougainvillea. “How do you like me now?” you asked your mother. “I’d rather you were a priest,” she answered from deep inside her woolens and let the train of history run you over.

Michelle Matthees

Michelle Matthees has published two collections, Complicated Warding and Flucht. She has received grants and awards from The Jerome Foundation, The Minnesota State Arts Board, The Arrowhead Regional Arts Council, AWP, and other arts organizations. Matthees is a graduate of the University of Minnesota’s MFA program in Creative Writing. She lives in Duluth, Minnesota.