Sarah Riggs
Figure Writing Reflected in a Mirror
Skin to chair: he wears a collar, a spine
Red profile, hand blur: ink hisses at the tablet
Poured black under biceps and jaw: urge scratching
Desultory marks: all that flesh recedes mid-arm
Discus flies out of the mirror: top-to-top stool
Splits the man’s shoulder blades: present figure
Hunched fluent: wristless in the glass
Tendons bent at the prayer bar: absorbed
Back out: stains black and white
Crumpled consonants flung: animal surge, biblical growl
Writing anything but: the floor squares, comes at
Mustard circles hidden pubic : heart’s not in it
Van Gogh in a Landscape, 1957
Rounding the outscape: stick figure drop off
Near dusk: a bluish blind sort of Giverny
Spongy, earth-stroked: miniscule artist
Become a twig: his head splashed on
Dot of yellow, to the side of neck: afterthought
Seen from around the curve: last walk?
Last neighborhood: also greens, reeds
A huge hole: mire of glanced pigments
The edge is clear: a trunk warps to the left
Barely on the road: save for the blotch of sun
Or seeds or mind: he won’t get here
Not landscape: paints pain out in it
Corrida Study #2
Horns, hind, and spine condense: motion spatters in
Body and bull merge bare: afterhorns spin buttock lines
Draw the arena: the toreador turns, swivels
The flesh palette: muscle hurls paint
A pool of bled charcoal: black drop
Spanish ocher unripped: the cloak redless
A rage white: that extra horn trespasses, rounds
Slices the man chestless: screams heart
Halves the arena: a receding crowd, flattened in a door
Effaced circles: regard the features hurl back
A boxed bull’s eye watches: talons grip
Feed on that mass: wound contorts red into wound
Sarah Riggs will publish Word Sightings: Poetry and Visual Media in Stevens, Bishop and O’Hara in summer 2002 (Routledge). Her poetry also appears in this year’s New American Writing, and her abstract paintings are on display in Montreal (www.gallerygora.com) in September.