members artwork

[just mercedes]

This is poetry via art, or meta art, or meta poetry, or something. Someone may understand.


Drawing glass

Yesterday on a grey sheet
a double handful of gravel;
granite chips, with mica crystal
glints in the rough surfaces.
(But how do I draw the inside?
To show how light runs through?
Do all surfaces hide, not show?)
‘Draw as you see.’

Today on a white sheet
a clear glass carafe, half-filled with water.
Light passes through it without breaking
but it splinters. I’ve bled from glass cuts.

Through the carafe, background;
Susan on her donkey, facing me
over the table, warped as the flask
shoulder swells, the studio shelves
on the wall behind her similarly curved
then back to straight. Below the water line
blurry shapes, a little darker in shade.
Filigree patterns over all, reflecting
from the ceiling light bank and the high
strip of windows along the side, rectangular
grids of lights cut down. They chronicle
the carafe’s curves, as they bend, stretch 
and slice from neck to nadir.

Clouds trip window’s light tones 
as they move, reflecting on the side
of a glass carafe half-filled with water.
Those shades flicker again when seen
in water-filled parts. All the shades
won’t stop fluctuating.

This Still Life? It's frenzied.
I try to pin it down without a cut,
without bleeding.