Hats snd Dresses / We Are Open
There’s a war on, you know?
So my schooling as an artist, well,
It isn’t in much demand right now
from the galleries and rich folk.
For better or worse, you know?
Painting plyboard pays the rent,
and to be honest, I like it a lot,
this working with people, and the sun.
The ladies I paint? Surrealism, you know?
Nobody could live as skinny as them,
all flesh and bone, waist so tiny,
you’d think her spine would be fatter.
We’re not starving here — look at me —
but I had this dream last night, women and children and men, dying in dirty camps,
like animals. When? Why? I don’t know.
(after the unattributed 1940 photograph, “Decorating the hoardings on the shattered shopfronts of Oxford Street, London”)
5 thoughts on "Hats snd Dresses / We Are Open"
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Great imaginative poems you’re doing based on photographs. Love the way you inhabit these other lives with such apparent ease.
Images that speak to me, be it a line or an emotion, are great candidates. Sometimes they give me a beginning, or a destination. Being a historian prepares me to find the small things that bring it into focus — a date, place, the use of “plyboard” rather than “plywood.”
A haunting ending. I loved the details about painting the plyboard. I agree with Kevin about these acrostic poems. I would be great to see them but do try look them up.
As I commented above, things like plyboard make the foreign familiar. I try to make the parenthetical note searchable. If you can’t find the image, comment and I’ll provide the link where I found it. As an alternative, you can e-mail me — lenlundh(at)aol(dot)com — and I’ll send you a virus-free jpg or png.
And the middle of the final verse should have a line break after “women and”. Sigh…