Bronwen, Painter of Miccasukee Street

Walking in the just-thereness of afternoon,
Scrubbed out by the Tallahassee sun, past the same
Shocking banana trees that have been
The most dramatic occurances all year
Since her move from the north,
She thinks we must stop life,

Cut it into stills, so the emptiness

Between them let's each tree, each afternoon

Stand up for itself'¦.
She remembers, amazed:
It's the same thought she had when living
In a cold maplike city of friends
Pale from art.

Short palm trees fluff up
Their wings like the mockingbird
Who shadow-scares worms.
Palm shadows have grown up
And solidified as feathery trunks
They've been at it so long,
Still as deChirico's shadow.
The line of live oaks is beyond all that,
Impossibly sublime, out of their surroundings'
Flat miles of white buildings.

She is not crowded now with intense friends
Loving her for their very perverse reasons,
Adulterous people who could believe with her
The Spanish moss on the random trees
Is really a rayonist painting
By Natalia Goncharova, scissors
Of arrested motion.

The group of friends used to look
At gallery pictures in basements
For their answers'¦

They'll believe the photo she sent them
More than anything she says, as it is flat
And still.

A crowded northern thought
Of cutting life into pieces
Is not the same thought
In an emptiness between palm trees

And more palm trees.


has been published at Memphis State Review

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