Art

Art

Erika Jo Brown

Not many passions take your pants off—

painting with oils, reading in the afternoon,

other people’s bodies. I want to really

say something here. I want to be clear.

 

But just as no two people see the same

colors, what you hear is not what I’m

saying. Not conversations as much as

serial misunderstandings, proximate

in space. One considers the dictionary

definition of “man.” One considers

the definition of “woman.” One considers

arm hair, soft spaces on a hot body.

 

The obsessive heat-seeking quality of

attraction. The paint on my pinkie is for

you—a little poison, a little turpentine.

The snaggletooth I want to stick my

tongue into. This is pigment from a rock,

this is pigment from a bug, this is pigment

from a bleeding heart, and this is jeopardy. 

 

Passion brought me here, but passion

cannot save me. To mix linseed and

varnish, to create something is to vanish

what was there before. Chroma for fastness,

chemistry tricks. Such bold strokes in

erasing and framing delicate beginnings.

About This Poem

 

“During an artist residency in Vermont, I observed the precautions that painters and sculptors took before handling their materials, including switching out of street clothes into studio ensembles. I wrote this about a month before my wedding. Romance was in the air, as were toxic fumes—same thing, no?”

—Erika Jo Brown