The next three poems are going to be about paintings
one way or another.
The first one is called An Artist Draws a Peach.
It's sort more of a fictional painting.
The other ones are real paintings by people with names,
and they hang in particular places.
But this one is sort of a made up one.
An Artist Draws a Peach.
She wanted to depict man and woman,
so she started with a snake.
It was green and flat as a ribbon.
It wasn't right.
There was no curve for a belly, no green under the green.
Even the huge apple had no far side to its red moon.
She was alone.
She was willing to wait.
Then she saw the peach.
It held out its peach color.
She drew it, drew it out of her body.
It was the color of the secret places of her body.
Was anyone else peach colored and bulging
with another surface?
She incised the peach with a hairline stroke.
Its pink split like a bivalve in water, like her own buttocks.
She could breathe deeply again.
The pink was released.
It folded its peach smoothly.
It bent toward its other side.
The flesh lit a candle under its skin.
Now she had teeth.
Her tongue touched her own body.
"I was so afraid," she said.
"But the peach, it was the first thing I really drew.
I understood its color.
As for shape, the shape was in the color.
My own body spoke from its long shyness."
[APPLAUSE]