In Art12 we were told
to learn the names of our bones,
to understand them as if we held them in our hands
with no flesh or muscle to separate them. We were to understand
our bodies, in order to birth them into charcoal.
It is a strange thing, to not know
the parts that make us.
I got home that night and took the splintery
handle of a shovel and found it to be like the branch of my arm;
I hid bits of wood under the pads of my fingers
and ached when they would not rest; drawing like this
presented me with dark, stagnant pictures
of festered dreams leeching their way into my bones.
Upon seeing dark streaks of sorrow and infection
in my sketches, my teacher told me to concentrate instead
on the curve of our model's hips
instead of her lacking eyes--
"her frown does you no good when her back is straight--
allow her to stand separate from the page and break her own way into the world"
That night I burnt the shovel into dark char
and drew hips and stomachs and the large width of thigh,
breasts and sloping shoulders, the defeat of a hand
half closed;
all held splinters, neatly tucked under their skin,
and I found I could not remember the name
of a single bone.
As ever, I am ridiculously jealous of your imagery and your lovely diction.
Coral, this is really lovely. I really like narrative in poems, so I like how clear the progression is from the beginning to the end. I love the images, the pieces of charcoal left throughout -- it's a dark, intense, dusty sort of medium very different from the usual pencil or ink.
There are, however, some weak points.
Here's the first:
It's weird, because later in the poem, you treat this as if she's really drawing figures, but this first mention of her making art is abstract and indecipherable. I do get an image when you say "of festered dreams leeching their way into my bones", but it's not clearly laid out, so I'm frustrated. What's odd is that I would totally accept this more abstract drawing in the last stanza instead of the improved hips and shoulders, because I'd feel like I had been through more with this character, but here I find it like a weak excuse for not explaining clearly.
The beginning of the next stanza, too, is too weak for me. There's poetry in the concreteness of most of this, so when you say there are streaks of sorrow and infection, it's too abstract to really work. For example, tucking splinters under the skin of the figure drawings works very well, because it is the physical description of the infection, the leeching that you want to touch on. But I don't think this poem works with those abstractions.
Again, that's why I'm fighting with the last line of the second stanza. Because it doesn't make concrete sense. If the teacher is trying to make the figure curved, then how does that connect to standing up and separate from the page? The idea of breaking her way into the world pairs with the idea of being straight, so the contradiction seems false.
And that's it. That last stanza is gorgeous, covered in free lines that any charcoal artist would want to see from you: big swooping mastery the first time you try to lay it down.
Lemme know if you have questions or comments, please.
I like it!
....but I don't understand what you're doing with the shovel.
I understand what you're doing with the splinters, and I understand that splinters come from the shovel, but I don't see how the shovel comes into play or what the speaker was doing with it in the first place. Drawing by scooping out dirt? How does this relate to art class? There's a disconnect for me.
Other than that, things tie together nicely. I can't tell if the "dark streaks of sorrow and infection" are literally coming from the person's infected hands or if you're just telling me what's bleeding into the drawings, and from a literary standpoint, I like that. It's a clever use of ......words asdlfajd I can't say that right but there you go.
I especially like the ending. She killed the thing that hurt her and moved forward, even if there were still wounds left behind. It's great.
....I hesitate to say this, but I find it dissonant that you capitalize the first words of sentences, but not of your quote. I'm used to all lowercase or rulefollowing, so. 8/ DO WHAT U WANT
*cough* Anyway, that stood out to me a tad bit.
Thanks for sharing, Persu.