Portrait of a Middle-Aged Woman on her Knees

“A painting to me is primarily a verb, not a noun, an event first and only secondarily an image.”
– Elaine de Kooning

She has lost an earring, a button, her phone, which is ringing but on silent, a number she
long forgot. She is scooping a spider free while a man stands above her with a god-book.
She is grouting the cracks with nail polish, studying splinters and thinking of her mother.
She is crouched to conceal a bruise, or has lost the tail end of a dream, trying to gather it
like loose fabric in a storm. She is huddling together lint from the laundry to shape an
animal for her child. She is bent in despair, or pain, or fear. She is being painted by a
room full of men. They use the soft brushes first, wide strokes. Loosening her hair.
Then a knife to cut away the red parts of her. Leave only bone-structure blue. When
the rains start, she blots into the smear. They pack up to leave, show each other their
day’s work with pride—each canvas abstract, hotel-room-quality. When asked, they
are unable to describe what they could never see in the first place.

I sat still so long I blurred,

but I was not still. I was wooden spoon.
I was salt. I was diaper shit and warm bath.
I was your insurance no longer covers that,
I was did you see the miracle? to no one—
a plastic bag snagged in the tree that looked
like Mary. When I see her in blue dreams,
she is all teeth, all train in the distance screaming.
I was scream in the parked car. I was therapy,
which means I was able to afford my own pain.
I was my son’s handsmears along my legs.
I counted them like rings in a tree.
Proof I was here. I was canvas and flood.
I was if I could just make something beautiful.
I was aged out of beauty. I was do-it-yourself
lonely. My therapist said I needed to spend more
time looking inward, but how do you commune
with a hollow? I was hull. I was afraid to rock
the boat. I was already in a storm. I was the best
swimmer. I could float on his anger and not cramp.
I was origami, a fold like the horizon for someone
else’s hue. I was mirror writing, an eraser, wilted
flowers by the door that stained the concrete,
my son picked them, he said I was a keeper.

MEGAN MERCHANT

Megan Merchant (she/her) is the co-owner of the editing, manuscript consultation, and mentoring business Shiversong and the author of four full-length collections. The latest, Before the Fevered Snow, was released at the start of the pandemic by Stillhouse Press. She is the editor of the literary journal Pirene’s Fountain. You can find her work at meganmerchant.wix.com/poet.

WINTER 2022