The Innisfree Poetry Journal

www.innisfreepoetry.org

by David Salner

First Painting


A boy stands before an easel in the attic,
beneath bare joists, and roughs the battle scene
he’s read about. He mixes flesh tones
from tubes of lemon-yellow and nut-brown,
dresses the flesh in blue or gray, but mostly blue.

He squints to bring the big guns into focus:
cannons pointing at the sky, lamp-black.
He shades the cylinders, to make them round:
gun barrels with ochre stocks; slender forearm;
spindly leg. He creases uniforms,

inks the hollow of a gully. With purple shadows
he molds the blunt, half-buried stones.


**

The sun is high on this July day, on his canvas,
above a farmhouse like the one he lives in.
He loses focus, because his dog is whimpering
on the stairs, and breaks for lunch and has to listen
to his mother tell him, “Darling, please
don’t wolf your sandwich.”


**

Back in the attic, the heat bears down.
He paints in dazzles because his eyes
are full of sweat. He dabs a silver glint
on dark and patient iron,

then holds his hand in a salute to block the rays
and sees a row of tiny men
standing in a field of knee-high corn.
One primes a cannon with a broom-like thing.

The boy’s brush hovers at attention, until a lone gun
spits a cloud of pitch on the horizon.

He must work quickly, now, mixing
rose and carbon, making
a carmine paste, smearing it on
blue uniforms where hands are pressed,
those nut and yellow hands, etching
surprise with sharpened pencil lines,
surprise upon a soldier’s face.


The Tourist

Barcelona