‘Nude in #0645AD’ by Eva Isherwood-Wallace

I once ran out of a museum
because the Blue Nudes were too blue,
as if Matisse instead tore holes
in white to make blue
the artificial language of the universe.

Despite the illness and the paper-cuts,
his blue is now the blue
that splinters through Cobalt,
Shades of blue, and the page
for any other thing we want explained.

Did he know his blue
would link itself to everything?
The silent, twisted nudes are making
a willow pattern of the internet,
biting little slits in the index of the world.

From issue #8: spring/summer 2019

About the Author
Eva Isherwood-Wallace recently completed an MA in Poetry at the Seamus Heaney Centre, Queen’s University Belfast. She was a commended prizewinner in Christ Church College Oxford’s Tower Poetry Competition, 2013. Her work has been published in The Tangerine.