Figure Writing Reflected in a Mirror

Skin to chair: he wears a collar, a spine

Red profile, hand blur: ink hisses at the tablet

Poured black under biceps and jaw: urge scratching

Desultory marks: all that flesh recedes mid-arm

Discus flies out of the mirror: top-to-top stool

Splits the man's shoulder blades: present figure

Hunched fluent: wristless in the glass

Tendons bent at the prayer bar: absorbed

Back out: stains black and white

Crumpled consonants flung: animal surge, biblical growl

Writing anything but: the floor squares, comes at

Mustard circles hidden pubic : heart's not in it

Van Gogh in a Landscape, 1957

Rounding the outscape: stick figure drop off

Near dusk: a bluish blind sort of Giverny

Spongy, earth-stroked: miniscule artist

Become a twig: his head splashed on

Dot of yellow, to the side of neck: afterthought

Seen from around the curve: last walk?

Last neighborhood: also greens, reeds

A huge hole: mire of glanced pigments

The edge is clear: a trunk warps to the left

Barely on the road: save for the blotch of sun

Or seeds or mind: he won't get here

Not landscape: paints pain out in it

Corrida Study #2

Horns, hind, and spine condense: motion spatters in

Body and bull merge bare: afterhorns spin buttock lines

Draw the arena: the toreador turns, swivels

The flesh palette: muscle hurls paint

A pool of bled charcoal: black drop

Spanish ocher unripped: the cloak redless

A rage white: that extra horn trespasses, rounds

Slices the man chestless: screams heart

Halves the arena: a receding crowd, flattened in a door

Effaced circles: regard the features hurl back

A boxed bull's eye watches: talons grip

Feed on that mass: wound contorts red into wound