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Leaving Van Gogh
By Loretta Oleck
the wind mimes a language I learned years ago-
a whispering tongue clicking and flexing
a brush roaming across my palate
across whatever has made its home inside my mouth-
blades of grass, shards of glass, perfect purple grapes
and cockamamie ideas about what to swallow,
what to taste, what to hold onto, and what to release
ideas that would later get me into trouble
there was a time that paint pulsed through my tangled veins
instead of blood
when art was the flood of beats and sounds
swooshing from the reapers sweep, from the weeping children,
from surrounding towns that I had never seen
as the reaper with his sharpened scythe cut down ears of wheat
I twirled round my ragged doll, stripped it of its pinafore
it isn’t all pretty
that’s what I heard
you too will slip into ugliness
these words were brushed and bruised with accentuated lines
impassioned with impasto-
reams of color and textured sheaves of wheat passed down
from the hands of Van Gogh from his barred bedroom window
streams of sulfur yellow with a tinge of violent violet
whipping through me like a sweep of the scythe
cutting through the myth that this might have been a place to heal
do you understand childhood isn’t real?
throw the baby doll away
you can’t play house forever
inside this place where Van Gogh waited
they took away my canvas and my brush
stripped me down and dressed me in a gown-
ball-gown, hospital-gown, wedding-gown, bed-gown
a hare-brained idea to raze off my locks
plant seeds in my scalp-
we can harvest something in that fallow ground
then one night a thick braid sprouted from nothing-
long enough to dangle down from between the bars
strong enough to hold the load of my youth
leaving my rag doll on the windowsill
I lowered myself down the plaited tail
escaping Van Gogh and his haystacks-
a tableau of golden mounds on a reaper’s field
I concealed myself under a shield of sky smeared in black
I was healed and I would never be coming back
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Corn on Stalk -- by Faith Kuzio