This noon the paint, wet on wet paper,
is dripped & sponge-buffed
into lacey-veined holding patterns
of non-figurative bereavement �
or so I claim
liking how that sounds.

*

This paint/pale mummer
licks out flickers of reaction,
foregoes confident weighing in
on how things look
or placement of meaningful symbols
just & just so.

No no � but I am being territorial
inside confining edges.
What pleases me most
is the way I�ve managed
not to muddy
the mute, pulpy center.

*

A good painter can have
some muscular sense of where
she may or may not
end up, smudges & all.

Painters like me are more likely
to approach the empty page
just short of burst �

watch, as time passes,
what control we managed to exhibit
during the layering stages
finally get taken over by the wayward leech
of intent & cheap pigment giving out
the better to reveal us.



�2007 by Lisa Gordon
previously published in The Antigonish Review