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20 Self-Portrait Inspired by a Reproduction ofVan Gogh’s“Houses at Auvers” A woman is frozen halfway between those two most painful steps, where tenths of seconds slow, like mothwings becoming touchable, and leave her open to each delicate death.What has happened here—first, to turn her head away from her flowers, the wandering Jew, and then to stop her, the plastic watering can tilted in her hand, a single drop of water poised on the lip of the spout above three violet blooms— is the instance of a voice coming from inside another room. Her name drifts out to her, and all its hard moments when need turns slowly from plant to child to the door leading out, the window with its frightening face of other windows. On the whitewashed wall above the peperomia,a figure,hunched, crooked, is set forever to take his next step. ...

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