Thomas Festa

Primer

I wanted it to be the river glinting through the trees, not rain-wet aluminum sheet roofing. Dark islands rising from a misty sea, not stunted pines sticking out of drifts of ground fog. I wanted it to be benign, as they said it would be before they operated. There was so much I wanted for you this autumn and couldn’t arrange. Everyone was glad when you got back to your paintings. All the waves, shores, dogs, birds, and flora precise as ever. But something had happened to the people in your portraits. Something made them look slightly off-kilter no matter where you hung them or how many times you’d nudge their frames, step back, and take a second look.

sable brush tips
through cloudy water
solstice MRI

---

About the Author

Thomas Festa is a Professor of English at the State University of New York, New Paltz, and the author of a forthcoming chapbook of poems, Earthen (Finishing Line Press). Other recent and forthcoming work includes an ecopoetic reading of W.S. Merwin’s late poetry (in ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment) and poems in Bennington Review, Drifting Sands Haibun, and Haiku Journal.