Things I Didn’t Know Before I Started Sketching
Emily Gordon
You can be angry at a landscape,
the light you thought was there
furtive as a boyfriend, shifting
willfully, permissionless, no sign.
White pencil blurs flaws, dilutes
and also illuminates, how vital
it turns out to be. Fuck negative space!
There is no surface uncovered
by pine needles, illogical shadows,
Amish lace in the trees at the shoreline,
impossible branches without origin.
Did you know lake waves are crosshatching,
did you know the crest of the mountain
is spiky as an unshaven shin?
How do you draw the sun that fell
through the net of the branches,
spent snakeskin fragile on a brown
forest floor. How do you show
the stripes on the hammock spotlit
like a tiny bicyclist in a grey Sempé
with a jeweled bouquet in his basket.
Emily Gordon grew up in Wisconsin and California and is a longtime journalist and editor. Her poems have also appeared in The Baffler, The Women’s Review of Books, Painted Bride Quarterly, Indie Soleil, HIV Here and Now, Transition, and the Toronto Globe & Mail. She lives in New Haven, Connecticut, and is a sound improviser for the Dirty Little Secrets show in New York City.