Four Poems on Bill Traylor

Brown House With Multiple Figures and Birds, by Bill Traylor (USA) 1939-1942

​Brown House with Multiple Figures and Birds (1939-1942)
 
I must not write
about this house
those silhouettes
that ladder
men in stovepipe hats
dogs or foxes
aerial and subterranean
giving chase
geese or vultures plunge and soar
away, away
shadows
attack
surround 
or flee 
this empty house
 
Bill Traylor
born enslaved in Alabama
freed from that house
at twelve
to sharecrop
raise a family
live on Montgomery’s streets
scavenge posters and boxes
to draw on with pencil
and paint in his dotage
by the fruit stand or
seated in front of a tavern
said he was born
on April Fool’s Day
but he was no fool
slept at the shoe store
or the funeral parlor
when he could
or with a daughter
buried October 1949
in an unmarked grave
 
I cannot know the pain
of living in a place
where lynching
was as common as cake walks
the stench
the stain
pain he numbed with drink
nor the joy he felt
discovering paint
in his eighties.
 
Still I want to stand
at Mount Mariah AME Zion Church
his polished tombstone
marks his place
marks his span
THROUGH HIS ART HE LIVES ON.
Traylor found a place to rest his bones.
 
Lois Baer Barr
 
Lois Baer Barr is a reading buddy for the Open Books Foundation in Chicago and teaches creative writing in Spanish at Lake Forest College.   Her chapbooks of poetry and flash fiction are Biopoesis and Lope de Vega’s Daughter. Twice nominated for the Pushcart Prize, she was a finalist for the Rita Dove Poetry Prize in 2019. 

Untitled (Man, Woman), by Bill Traylor (USA) 1940-1942

Untitled (Man, Woman), ca. 1940–1942.
 
Two fingers pointing,
Hello! Hello!
Like a cave painting
from Jim Crow,
a woman, a man,
tux and tall hat,
evening bag swinging
tick-tock on its chain.
 
Like a Rorschach
painted on cardboard.
So cool to strut
a finger dance.
So fierce to walk
a public spat.
Or maybe they’re
jazzed-up Blues-ers
pointing to God.
 
Kathryn Dohrmann
 
Kathryn Dohrmann has taught for many years in both the Psychology and Environmental Studies Departments at Lake Forest College. Her poems have been published in CALYX, The Chicago Tribune, The A-3 Review, Thema, Turning Wheel: The Journal of the Buddhist Peace Fellowship, and in Collaborative Visions: The Poetic Dialogue Project. She has been a finalist in the WBEZ Illinois Poet Laureate Contest, and a judge for the Midland Authors’ Society annual poetry prize.

Construction with Exciting Event, by Bill Traylor (USA) 1939-1942

Construction with Exciting Event, 1939-1942 

Men in black 
chimneysweep hats
hearts pounding 
fingers spread in fear
about to be launched
into the unknown,
child hanging  
from the tail 
of confused cat,
hyaenas ready
to taste blood,
one being soon
to axe another,
blackbird escapes
with the olive branch,
thrusters ignite
with a rumble.
 
Karin Gordon
 
Karin Gordon, who was born in Denmark, has worked as a textile designer in Sweden, Switzerland and New York. After moving to New York, she dreamt that a Swiss artist took her paintbrushes and handed her a bunch of yellow pencils: Now you write. She began writing non-fiction for newspapers and arts organizations. After she heard the British painter Cecil Bacon say he likes poetry because it says a lot in a few words, she turned to poetry. Her poems have appeared in East on Central, Whetstone, Wisconsin Academy Review, Sow’s Ear Poetry Review, Poetica, Snowy Egret, and others.

Snake, by Bill Traylor (USA) 1939-1942

Snake, 1939-1942
 
Even the snake has room for complaint.
Wide mouth open to swallow, its still eye
spies us, judging our size, fangs bared.
It is black, and thin, and coiled but for a tail,
spiked as if testing the dull, orange air;
fissures sizzle around its head.
A famine sounding in a flat desert,
we stand accused and are stilled.
 
Cynthia T. Hahn
 
Cynthia T. Hahn, author of two books of poetry, Outside-In-Sideout (Finishing Line Press, 2011) and Coïncidence(s), a bilingual volume of French and English poems, illustrated by Monique Loubet (alfAbarre, 2014), has been a French professor at Lake Forest College, IL since 1990. She has translated a volume of French poetry, as well as nine novels and short stories by French, Algerian and Lebanese authors.