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The painting is in the public domain per https://www.wikiart.org/en/john-french-sloan/the-cot-1907. The poetry/art piece is titled: “SHN #14 – “The Cot / “Satin.”

Karla Linn Merrifield says “In early June an acquaintance of mine who’s an eminence gris is the arts community, inadvertently introduced me to 20th-century artist John Sloan, usually associated with the Ashcan School. I soon discovered Sloan’s work ranged farther than the Ashcan label indicates. Sloan’s etchings, in particular his nudes, captured my imagination. I was smitten with Sloan; his art makes me swoon as I do when I see many of Georgia O’Keeffe’s paintings, as I did when I first saw Michelangelo’s David in the flesh, er, marble. And so the Sloan research began.

On June 20, I pulled up “Nude on Stairs” in my photo viewer and stared and stared and stared—until I began to see a haiku taking shape around the woman’s…