Sunday, May 15, 2011

I try watercolors

 What I saw on break at work
Daffodils in the Woods     





























8 comments:

  1. I guess I am still teachable.
    Thanks to my adventures with a small group of creatives taking on "The Artist's Way," I've allowed myself to play in mediums other than the printed word. I bought myself a tablet of paper and a cheap set of watercolors and had fun. If only I could remember this freedom in writing, too.

    ReplyDelete
  2. These remind me of Japanese paintings from the 50's. Beautiful.

    ReplyDelete
  3. jane, i sweetly smile toward you. all over the page. one way or another. all over the page.

    just come. spread yourself like colour. like butter. let it get on my chin. you're beautiful. your words, your brush, they're only there waiting for you to release them.

    pull back the lid.

    there is only containment to fear.

    xo
    erin

    ReplyDelete
  4. for you,
    i'll post in a day or two:

    i saw her walking briskly this morning
    her roseate skirt cutting the back of her leg
    like flowers thumping in a breeze
    like a child saying, mama, i'm here
    and again in the afternoon
    stern about the tractor
    his shoulders tight
    and his eyes looked onto the bales of hay
    he hadn't bound yet

    i smile sweetly toward them
    they are all over the page
    her skirt like Japanese paper
    it's edge like vines climbing, rose trellis
    scent as sure as sex and summer
    and he like the scrotum
    in the pig farmer's hands
    telling the weather
    they're bleeding on the page
    let it happen
    give it to my chin like butter
    they are beautiful
    it's all over them
    unwashable
    waiting to be released

    there is only containment to fear.


    xo
    erin

    ReplyDelete
  5. oops, locked onto, and scrotum/intestines

    xo
    erin

    ReplyDelete
  6. Yes! Let's dabble in watercolors and then...
    Writing has its own hues.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Sweet Jesus, Erin, you have no idea what your words mean to me, or do you? I grew up on a farm, of course. My father was a pig farmer for a long time. I loved the piglets and set a small stool in their barn to sing to them as they ran blissfully in the shit under the granary. But Animal Husbandry is cruel. So much must happen to the animals to make them fit for market, for our use. I would hold the young male piglets, so pink, and warm, by their hind legs, while my dad took a single edge razor and sliced them open, feeding their small testicles to the waiting cats. How they did not come to me after that, how they ran screaming away.
    I so admire those strong farm girls at the fair who raise that prize winning steer or barrow who is auctioned off to a grocer to be butchered. They know the score. I want to know what their diaries hold.

    Thank you so much for your words. They are a sweet balm.

    ReplyDelete
  8. jane, how odd and wonderful that two artists were born and me unknowing, you and your father.

    at my daughter's soccer game last night there was a girl, tall and forceful in her way, knee pads on and her hair pulled back in a farm girl headscarf. i watched her. i knew she must have smelled fine. i knew there was a softness to her. the boys acquiesced to her when she moved toward the ball and then they almost clapped her back as though she were one of them after she made her moves - but not quite. i wished i could have relived my youth as her, as you say, knowing the score, and yet being woman.

    thank you for receiving this bit of a poem.

    i want to say i'm sorry the pigs grew afraid but it's not quite sorry but rather it is something more like, i see you.

    xo
    erin

    ReplyDelete