La Aureola de Maria Izquierdo, 2005 La Carreta The supple skin of the circus tent will be lowered, folded, packed

for travel. In Maria Izquierdos painting, La Carreta the sky droops, distant in the night, its wounded hues go purple at their edges. The circus has closed. Pale blue clouds are chased by the darkness. The mottled gray horse looks past its left shoulder and deeper moves into the circle. The clown is fatigued. Hes swaddled in shadow. The strongman hunches low, arcing with a green heavy ball and the acrobat changes her clothes.

A high wire artist wraps up her sores. Actors load the cargo on a flesh-toned cart. The tender colors of the canvas glow vanilla, ochre, yellow, so like the shades of mothers milk. a light which makes me consider a thing my own mother, also Maria, said to me. The nipple is the most poetic eye. It feeds the inner skins, spins, and tints the silks that line the chambers of the heart, the lung, the liver, all the human organs. The circus is the body, bloomed then blanched as the cart cures and carries it away.