Missing Artist Found in the Railyard, by Laurel Benjamin

Missing Artist Found in the Railyard 

This poem was inspired by the artist, her story, and by Transmission Session, 2022: (scroll down to last painting)
https://2022.rca.ac.uk/students/sarah-cunningham/ 
 
Between the first and third vertebrae, 
where the tracks switch, allowing passage 
 
to another direction. Loud drone 
like someone pressing a piano pedal, 
 
sostenuto silencing 
her pale flesh. 
 
A transmission to once gold fields 
now brown, where catkins 
 
catch reeds from river channels, 
where cows had given up 
 
a future pasture. Her youth 
convinced us to imagine 
 
knifepricks, a righteousness, 
though her website lacquered 
 
best practices, hundreds interviewed
on meaningful connections. 
 
Her paintbrush demanded 
smoothness, yet she rough-
 
brushed, captive 
to the linen canvas. 
 
Perhaps a lilac beard of the past spring 
snuck into the final landscape, 
 
with steps of green and ivy walls--
a southerly climate? Italy with swollen 
 
afternoon windows shuttered, seeping 
through the cracks, streaks of carmen. ​

Laurel Benjamin

Laurel Benjamin's new collection, Flowers on a Train, is forthcoming from Sheila-Na-Gig Editions. She is a San Francisco Bay Area poet, active with the Women’s Poetry Salon. She curates Ekphrastic Writers and is a reader for Common Ground Review. Current publications: Pirene's Fountain, Lily Poetry Review, Cider Press Review, Taos Journal of Poetry, Mom Egg Review, Gone Lawn, Nixes Mate. She received an Honorable Mention for the Ruben Rose Memorial Poetry Competition. Laurel holds an MFA from Mills College. She invented a secret language with her brother. Find her at: https://www.laurelbenjamin.com