Legs by Megan Windom

Legs by Megan Windom

My art teacher said: Look, think, make a mark

Look, I told myself, and pushed to make the

crucial connection that would engage me.

Everyone knows that a cow has four legs,

two circles with four stems dripping from the

bottom and splotchy patterns on the side

can bring them to mind.  Look, my teacher would

surely tell me, they are nothing like that.

Likeness is the thing.  First, look at what’s near,

the delicate foot with toes pointing at

the pen that’s hooked into my eye.  Gesture

needs to be ensnared before the details.

Looking destroys the way I see the world.

Nothing is whole, but the relation of

parts that come into close proximity

with light accenting some, hiding others.

But they’re broken. Incomplete.  They require

some subtle substance.  There’s more intent than

the surface is willing to expose. Or

there should be. Concepts act as driving force

behind the angle of her wrist where her

hand dips down to drape across her red knee.

The figure to be drawn – roughly my age.

She’s perched upon a platform, no single

angle of modesty afforded her.

The corner of the room becomes her friend.

She watches it raptly while we watch her.

Look. Okay. But the eye is no longer

seeing. It thinks in pools of light and dark.

Pause, draw an inch.  Erase to start over.

Everyone knows a woman has two legs.

____________________________

Pencil by Marianne Boruch

My drawing teacher said: Look, think, make a mark.

Look, I told myself.

And waited to be marked.

Clouds are white but they darken

with rain. Even a child blurs them back

to little woolies on a hillside, little

bundles without legs. Look, my teacher

would surely tell me, they’re nothing

like that. Like that: the lie. Like that: the poem.

She said: Respond to the heaviest part

of the figure first. Density is

form. That I keep hearing destiny

is not a mark of character. Like pilgrimage

once morphed to mirage in a noisy room, someone

so earnest at my ear. Then marriage slid.

Mir-aage, Mir-aage, I heard the famous poet let loose

awry into her microphone, triumphant.

The figure to be drawn —

not even half my age. She’s completely

emptied her face for this job of standing still an hour.

Look. Okay. But the little

dream in there, inside the think

that comes next. A pencil in my hand, its secret life

is charcoal, the wood already burnt,

a sacrifice.