A PAINTING Poem by Sarah Howe

A PAINTING



I watched the turquoise pastel
melt between your fingerpads;
how later you flayed

the waxen surface back
to the sunflower patch
of a forethought, your

instrument an upturned
brush, flaked to the grain -
the fusty sugar paper buckled.

You upended everything,
always careless of things:
finest sables splayed

under their own weight,
weeks forgotten - to emerge
gunged, from the silted

floor of a chemical jamjar.
I tidied, like a verger
or prefect, purging

with the stream from the oil-
fingered tap. Stop,
you said, printing

my elbow with a rusty index,
pointing past an ancient
meal's craquelured dish

to the oyster-crust
at the edge of an unscraped palette -
chewy rainbow, blistered jewels.

COMMENTS OF THE POEM
READ THIS POEM IN OTHER LANGUAGES
Close
Error Success