Magritte's The Menaced Assassin, After Hours

Abstract

Magritte's The Menaced Assassin, After Hours Diana M. Chien (bio) Keywords Diana M., Chien, Magritte, ekphrasis, painting, mountains, composition, assassin Waiting for resolution the players grow tired,fretful like old moths. The same dim light suffuses the room,lies dustlike on the slopes beyond the window's fretwork. Are the mountains blue? or grey? The men at the windowdon't see, talking in the low chunner of run-down machinery.The dead woman on the divan crosses her legs and sighs. She wishes for blue candy, a cigarette, someoneto take up the cloth lying across her collarbonesand wipe the blood from her mouth. In the gramophone's mouth the assassin,slender as the dead woman, engages his reflection:a deer holding converse with a forest pool. At the door, a man fingers his brutal club; another,his tangling net. The trap has been sprung. There is no plot.The dead woman uncrosses her legs, Penelope unweaving. [End Page 342] Diana M. Chien diana m. chien's poetry has appeared in Tin House, Boulevard, American Reader, VOLT, and Web Conjunctions and has received awards from Atlantic Monthly and others. She holds a certificate in creative writing from Princeton University and a PhD in microbiology from MIT, where she directs a science communication program. Copyright © 2021 The Massachusetts Review, Inc.