The Voices Project
Follow us
  • POETRY LIBRARY
  • ABOUT
  • SUBMIT
  • RESOURCES

Finding the pain in paint~ By Rachel Higson

9/18/2018

0 Comments

 
I feel like an artist. I’m not one,
but my head is full of paint.
No easel or studio or palette
or woman on a bed or fruit
for a still life because I only
wish that I could sit still long
enough to care about the still
lives of fruit, how their skins
touch, how I could add some
grapes for a little symbolic
splash of the blood of Christ or
maybe a few peaches in the mix
to hint at fertility or whatever I
see fit because it’s not real life.

No, I’m more abstract
not in a delicate, intentional kind of way
not dribbling paint
with a cigarette in the corner of my mouth letting
the ashes
fall on the canvas
and mix with the paint and channel all that chaos into arbitrary
powerful surges of energy and existence and what people call 
manliness. No, I don’t paint
with that confidence. I don’t even own a brush.

I prefer to gush colors
that I didn’t know existed
until they streamed down my face
until I squeezed their tubes straight
onto the canvas -- Alizarin Crimson,
Yellow Ochre, Phthalo Blue -- I start
scraping them desperately with my palette knife,
wounding the canvas,
exposing what’s underneath that blank
white. I think I’m finding its true colors
so when I realize that they’re mine
I keep scraping and
searching and
thinking
until it all turns brown then black.

I don’t plan to sell.
I’ll give it to you for free, please.
I’ll even pay you to take it
just so long as you can interpret it for me
and tell me what all this means.



Author Bio:
Hailing from Irvine, California, Rachel Higson just graduated with an English writing major and art history minor from DePauw University in Greencastle Indiana. She loves to skateboard, run, surf, paint, and snowboard. She has written over 14 articles for an online ethics magazine, the Prindle Post. Publishing three of her poems with A Midwestern Review, DePauw's literary magazine, before becoming its poetry editor and editor-in-chief, Rachel has pursued poetry throughout her college career. As a Fulbright recipient, she will spend the next year in Taiwan. Eventually, Rachel will go to graduate school for either writing or sociology, hoping to become a professor.
0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Poet Search

    by last name

    Archives

    January 2023
    June 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013
    November 2012

    RSS Feed

Contact The Voices Project: editors@thevoicesproject.org