Still Life Poem by Charles Malcolm

Don't paint fruit.

Paint a naked woman
who desperately wishes
that you were somebody else.

Paint the intoxicating transsexual
who drinks gin in the alley
and keeps a box-cutter in her purse.

Paint the expression your boyfriend makes
when you pick up his cellphone
or the one that you make
when he picks up yours.

Whatever keeps you up at night.

Paint your father's face from memory.
Paint what your son might have looked like.
Paint your own reflection on moonshine
or even more impossible,
on nothing.

Paint the worst moment of your life
and work your way down the list feverishly.
Paint as long as they keep coming,
and you'll hope that they will

because you don't want
to paint fruit.

Not yet.