20200727

Palenqueras de Noviembre (Ana Mercedes Hoyos; oil on canvas, 2000)


Sherry Johnson





A woman is never her dress, we might say.

In memory we might say, part of her
becoming a multi-coloured dress, or
several of them, arranged into a screen.

Time-ratcheted immobility of sickness… Sorting
the assorted details; oblivion’s white brushwork-light
filling the crevices of a lost word. Plumb in the middle of a

mid-afternoon walk to the market. The joyous
snapshotted seconds become skewed
and granulated.  All we can do then is lay our

cheeks on the frameless cloth, wonder about it a lot.
Blankly its folds in the light of the sky under
the sun, no safety net to catch us. Plantains

                               and mangos shored
/ heavy, the skin-split line in balance
against it as though a game, both play and strategy.

Precious scraps talk. To us about it
in the way the dead or poets do. Which
when it happens means it’s really worth something

Maybe cut 3 clashing sections of her dress, stretch
                       it right over the frame and hang it
on the mustard-coloured wall there, an outdoor

gallery piece and memento of the NOT-postcard
variety a painter might bring back with her, token
of these fruit market Palenqueras of Cartagena.




Sherry Johnson is the author of two books of poetry, Pale Grace and Hymns to Phenomena. Her poems have appeared in many journals, magazines and anthologies, most recently in The Malahat Review and forthcoming in CV2 and The Iowa Review. Also a film critic, her articles have appeared in Senses of Cinema, MUBI Notebook, the Swedish academic journal Film International and others.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.