Retrospective of a Woman

After Dalí’s Retrospective Bust of a Woman and The Little Theater


Salvador Dalí put bread on the head
of a woman, and she does not look
amused. Thinks he’s a genius as usual,
when it’s she who baked the loaf

in the first place, weighing out
the flour and mothering the yeast
and tending to the timings
of everything. She longs

to plop a pickle on his head,
plucked dripping from the jar,
watch the vinegar weep
down his face. Or a dollop

of cream like seagull shit,
who is clever now? But she’s
learned to stay still, wipe the crumbs,
bait the ants when he’s not looking.

Later, she reappears in the corner
of a diorama, outside the scene
looking in, face visible
only to the long spoon, to the blue ball,

to the baguette-shaped, pickle-tinged
Italian cypress, asking herself: what
am I doing here, and who
will remember me?

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Franziska Roesner is a professor of computer science at the University of Washington. She was a poet first, though, and has returned to poetry recently. Her poetry has appeared or will appear in Rust & Moth, Eunoia Review, Third Wednesday, The Loch Raven Review, and others. She lives in Seattle with her husband, two daughters, and one remaining cat.