By Rebecca Boyle
Featured Art: “Poppies” by Jenn Powers

Wave, say goodbye to the small figure getting smaller,
to all who get very still then back away slowly:
We only paint large pictures now. The night
we decide we’re moving is the night
we are due for a breakdown—that corner there
calling me. We invade your house, fill it
with beautiful people, total hope.
I like forever, I like this location. Nothing looks better
in factory settings, every person I meet a rising star
in a waiting room. It’s too easy to say everything is a death
of another small city. What I’m looking for exists
somewhere in papertowns, night shifts
in Minnesota, all the people in those houses
with dreams once. See them make their hands into guns,
say, “You got it,” wink, and look away. Tomorrow, pin this ghost
town an awakening in the underpainting, the flowers
still bright at this elevation, the motorcycles
a dotted line to cut along the mountaintop.
I admit all I ever wanted was a common picture,
open country in some new image, past versions
you vaguely recognize, a feeling somewhere between
“I learned to read in this room” and “I have something to say
in big streets.” I’m not worried when you draw a blank
face or a mirror where my face should be. Just paint
a big enough picture, so I can move and still be in it.

Note: This poem alters a phrase from Mark Rothko’s short artist statement, “I Paint Very
Large Pictures” (1951).

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Rebecca Boyle is from China, Maine, and graduated from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop with an MFA in poetry. Her work has appeared in Bennington Review, New Delta Review, River Styx, and Tupelo Quarterly.