Five Poems on R.C. Gorman, by Brenda Nicholas

A Chat with My Daughter About a Woman and Her Vase
influenced by a viewing of R.C. Gorman’s Salina
            
The way the ground and sky are 
painted caramel colours during dusk, 
and the way Salina wears white
like vanilla ice cream,
her hair a chocolate fudge spill 
dripping down her back, reminds me 
of cravings boys will have
when they encounter females 
in that space between childhood  
and womanhood, shown here as pottery 
fresh out of the kiln, newly painted
with groups of claw-like swirls
groping this vase, and Salina 
appears as a desert dessert waiting 
outside of her bowl. See how, 
with chin raised, she proudly protects
her virgin vase?  She waits for a love 
to warm her skin like the sun’s fingers,
waits for her heart to fully flower.

**

Mountain Lessons
after R.C. Gorman's Earth Mother, serigraph on paper
 
Earth, dusted with flaky desert skin,
grips this new mother covered with skin like sunsets. 
Earth offers her windy voice and cacti warnings 
as abrasive as burned crop fields, 
an eight-hundred-mile walk to Bosque Redondo, 
heartbreak.
The cacti cast shadows that loom, and
under the moon, this new mother whispers, 
don’t linger too long in their shadows. 
Earth hears her lessons passed on, and her cheeks warm 
the air with sun. The new mother is a small hill hunched 
in woven yarn sitting on Earth’s lap, protected by her 
purple mountainous shoulders, and the fringe 
on this new mother’s shawl 
matches Earth’s thirsty brown grass.
 
**
 
Circles
after R.C. Gorman’s Two Women, Oil on Canvas, 1981
 
Their white round circle hips, 
bellies with babies, and full breasts
fused by words falling off their lips
 
discuss what lies beyond their grip:
soft lines blending triumphs and tests,
and their white round circle hips 
 
attend to codes that cannot rip
oil-covered canvas thinned by sweat,
fused by words falling off their lips
 
on terracotta faces that will not chip,
holding onto burdens without regret,
and their white round circle hips
 
sit with equal parts praise and quip,
uniting women they have not met,
fused by words falling off their lips,
 
full breasts, and laps with babies’ sips,    
comforted from all of the world’s threats
because ladies with white round circle hips
are fused by words falling off their lips.

**

Ruins
after R.C. Gorman’s Ruins, Lithograph, 1983
 
“I always was in awe of the ruins. I felt there were still people living in them, and I still feel that way.”
 R.C. Gorman
 
She bends over shattered history, broken remains 
            scattered to trail lead her backward in time, 
and the foreground sand moves from dark 
            to light, offers its own answers,
illuminates an empty ghost cave
            behind her. For how many centuries 
did the sun chew its way
            through those two phantom walls
we know existed,
             held within its confines an entire people
who needed windows, 
            like you and me, to look out and see 
God breaketh not all men’s hearts alike.

**
 
If This Chair Could Talk
after photograph by R.C. Gorman, 1980
 
“This is Aunt Mary’s chair, which doesn’t look like a throne, but it is. She’s a queen.” –R.C. Gorman
 
At the epicenter of settled dust, her chair
sits fading and cracking under sunray 
pressure like a field labourer’s sad face.
If it could talk, we would hear stories
spanning thirty years or more about her
holding lap after lapful of babies, shucked corn, potatoes.
It would mention what is not in this black
and white photo, beyond the chicken resting
in its shade, footprints in this dirt, the chipped
window paint. It would tell us the chair’s busted-out
seams trap Aunt Mary’s laugh, and they
(the chicken and chair) wait patiently for her return.
“I’m worn out,” the chair might say, but sunlight
 hits one of its stainless-steel legs 
and begs to differ as it glistens.

Brenda Nicholas

Brenda Nicholas is an Associate Professor of English at Temple College. Her work has appeared in The Painted Bride Quarterly, Main Channel Voices, Red River Review, Illya’s Honey, Menacing Hedge, Snapdragon, The Helix Magazine, and other literary journals.