MERNA DYER SKINNER
POET - PHOTOGRAPHER - CONSULTANT
POETRY IN PUBLIC PLACES
Woman, Spotted
After Veruska Vagen’s dot de verre (fused glass) mosaic “The White Hat”
Beneath / your white hat
Taylor Swift / red lips / languid
Daisy Buchanan / eyes / blue / daring
me / Step closer / No / too close
your allure / blurs / From a distance /
your visage / emerges / Pure / color
glass dots / converge / Sixteen-hundred / fired /
fused to window glass / backed / in black
I see / reflecting / in your pane /
my torso / juxtaposed / below / your face /
My face / too / endured fire / blistered
beneath summer sun / burn damage /
hidden deep / last layer / of my epidermis /
percolating / miniscule / basal cells /
pure cancer / spots / waiting / twenty years
to surface / scars / visible / close-up
SOMETIMES, WILD PLUM TREES WEEP
After Kelly O'Dell's 2017 art installation Remain(S)*
Gone.
My father’s first grocery shop, where once
he’d stacked bushels of sweet summer corn,
rows of watermelon, and peaches by the peck
outside the shop door, with the bell that rang
crisp and pure as a prayer
Gone.
My childhood home, where once
blue hydrangeas and white honeysuckle
spread their roots beneath our front porch,
and dripping swimsuits hung along the rail.
Spiders knit lacey webs that lasted all summer.
Gone.
My elementary school building, where once
Peg Leg Bates tap danced across our creaky
gym floor, a wooden stump strapped to his thigh.
And when he jumped!—arms and legs straight out,
he looked like a starfish shooting for the moon.
Yet.
There, still standing in a distant corner
of the schoolyard, the small copse of wild plum trees
where once, I’d slipped between the trunks, into their
shady circle to steer a pirate ship, fly a rocket
or let down my hair from the castle turret, calling
to my friends, "Let's pretend...."
Now.
Overgrown, my once secret space gives me no entrance.
Along the tree trunks, glinting in the August sunlight,
amber tear drops cascade down the bark. I study
the bits of black, flecks of brown inside each drop, looking
for shapes of my past—a bell, a web, a starfish—
for something of me that remains.
* Museum of Northwest Art, 2017