layer hidden off the screen
     

Maureen Owen
Phyllis Wat
    Postcard Collaborations

 

O if a spree are we on this broad day frightened 

dressed for the morning   she relaxes      was it  did he    said she   
unfinished thinking bobs in the rising steam     rowing  across 
her lips   where were they going    what were they up to
Everyone had left the table so abruptly!            You can say that again!  she said
to herself   & to the  plates  utensils cups & bowls   that sang  unexpectedly
in a warm glow of disarray    a pastiche of haunting children's choruses  & songs in early music  
hall styles       the luscious colors   of the furnishings        can impinge the  loneliness 
Does she dip the apple slices in salt water  like we do?    the soaked arm of her silk
underwear    the soaked arm of her silk underwear

Owen

 

Painter Seeks Refuge

     I linger
linger is line plus G.E.
     in the warm orange grid
grid helps you to see
     of my life as a house-
house helps you to see
     -wife, or kitchen-, or ale-wife, a fish
in wife is my refuge
     bony fish call menhaden
I'm a runner and painter
     did I make that up? Hushed corner
This is my painting
     I can make everything up, the farmchair
this is my kitchen
     the disheveled food on plates, the mirrorlike pools
held together by grids
     in cups, stained-glass deepness collecting
warm colors for now
     within quiet crannies, knives blunted
that was the knife that I eyed
     tines of forks soft as hairbrushes
it vanished from sight
     every surface seeming a cushion
this is the room where I lingered
     or functional apparatus, the chair
played  house
     in particular calls me to sit
ran  every  morning
     before a day's labor on squares and circles
longer  and  longer
     of food preparation, vitamin-soaked and scaly
and stopped coming back

Wat
 
 
    

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