Portrait of the Artist as a Young Girl
- Origin Story
On the basement wall, top of the stairs,
they Scotch-taped my two crayoned drawings,
sprung alive when I flicked the lights on.
I hated them. One a tangled spaghetti-
like scribble, yellow and red, the other,
a maroon oblong jewel, outlined in black,
like an enameled scab. I picked, like skin,
bit by stubborn bit, at the images on
the thin manila paper, worried away
the wax, particles of pigment collected
in my tiny fingernails, until I disappeared
the image. No one asked where
they went. Nowadays parents frame
their children’s art on the fridge. No
one thought about origins, that I had
come from some soft cavern where I’d left
my handprints on my mother’s walls,
deep in her interior. In kindergarten
I ran home from school, so many
days my mother pulling my pants down
at the utility door in the garage, before
I could enter the house, for her
to clean me up, the universe still going
through me like one hot fingerpaint,
my fear my shame my art
- First Dream
A small child, I stood up
to wipe myself, then turned
to look in the bowl:
set in the toilet, a crescent
moon afloat, palely yellow
against a tropical sky, teal.
But no. Wasn’t it
really a peeled banana, nude,
its body tender and kind,
a fruity comma? Could I be
its originator? I had felt
no strain, a silken sculpture
slipped from the slot, like
mother’s breast from her bra,
minky coin, glide down the slope.
Night and wintertime but inside
the radiators steamed, meant
to dispel cold, fog mirrors. Warm.
His mother pried open Krishna’s mouth
to force out the filth he ate
from the ground, and saw instead
inside his tiny cavity, this astonishment:
stars, planets, a whole cosmos.
Once, when I locked myself in,
my mother came through the open
window from the fire escape to let
me out. The door shut, until
she rescued me. She asked me
every time I went, whether I had “made”
one. This one I knew to keep
secret, to myself. This one
I’d name differently. This one
I’d title and write forever.
- The Pale Gaze
It was my turn, the last, the littlest,
kindergarten in the fall, to sit
for the artist in the center
of the room, where his easel was
set up, but not before I was prepped,
submitted to the comb, the scrape
of barrette across my scalp to clip
my blonde curls back, an unruly
pageboy, out of my eyes. Even
then I did not like it when my mother
did that. The oddity of holding a pose,
of staying still, orphaned from the laughter
and chatter of the other subjects, my parents,
my sister, family friends, gathered
on the sectional sofas around me, their
portraits already finished. Mine, now hung
on the wall for years, taken for granted,
I look bobble-headed, neck circled by
the lace collar provided by the artist,
cameo rodeo. In profile, my hemispheric
eye, cantilevered into its socket, stares at
an imagined distance like a shy search light.
Nose not yet broken, I was, they tell me,
so beautiful. But I am an Ariel trapped behind
glass, still waiting for her Prospero, stricken
into innocence, at her very first
sacrifice, many more to follow. Wisped
with chalk, charcoal registers her face,
a smoky cloud, rendered in the very same
medium used for barbecues, manmade
from remnants of burnt wood and peat
that rendered her into this self, onto
heavy stock paper, under the influence
of an image, framed and kept precious,
yet everywhere haunting my mirrors.