Dulcet Tones Takes Up Painting
When I tell my husband Ape
I want to be de Chirico,
he says de who? Art
makes him turn the TV up louder.
I ask what he wants for dinner.
No response. Somebody is winning
again on Jeopardy. I can’t watch—
everything must start with a question.
I pile up questions in my back seat
and haul them to the resale shop.
Even they don’t want them. Yet
my paintings will be questions
rescuing stray answers from the street.
Light will ache out of shadows
the way I ache out of sleep.
I’m maybe there, vague but alert.
I may paint Ape’s portrait,
something abstract.
A remote in a chocolate cake.
Kenneth Pobo has a new book forthcoming from Assure Press called Uneven Steven. He won the 2019 chapbook contest from the State Poetry Society of Alabama for Your Place or Mine. He grew up in Illinois, but has also lived in Tennessee and Wisconsin, and for the past 33 years in Pennsylvania.
Art: “Rise” by Sandy Coomer - 10X10, acrylic pour on claybord
Statement: The phrase that caught me in this poem was “light will ache out of shadows.” In our effort to create art in any form, we have to sometimes face apathy from others. Creativity has its own power and rises forth anyway.