Shari Diane Willadson

Stop Frame

I

A young boy speaks to an old man.
His words are blunt with authority.
The old man doesn't wear a hat,
but if he did, it would be in his hands.
The boy isn't angry, he is simply
using someone else's voice.
Then I see the red scarf.

II

She says her dogs prefer the French
and Italian films because of the love scenes.
"They really get to screw each other", she says.
Her dogs won't mate to the fake American movies.
"Those sissies stay in their underwear."
A fat blond puppy
pisses on my shoe.

III

They will lose the farm.
He takes her necklace
and heads toward town.
As he runs down the hill,
he trips and the necklace
disappears in the river.
He doesn't cry.

IV

The lady at the video store recommends
the one about the guy on a hill.
He makes friends with a cougar
and turns it into a vegetarian
by feeding it berries.
She doesn't remember the title.
I'll know when I see the cover;
his face will haunt me.

V

A mother looks into a girl's face.
It's not the girl's mother,
but the woman is someone's mother.
The girl listens to her and runs.
She hides under some bushes
and waits for the soldiers.


The Many Ways Out of a Looking Glass

In 1912, Mrs. Arthur Renning decided
that crazy artists should swallow their pills
with a cupful of rural inspiration.
The Renning House can boast of dozens
whose finest work came from the willows
that hem the brook next to the chapel.

On the third floor is a room
painted the yellow of churned butter.
The last occupant, a sculptor,
used it as a workshop. A crane
outside the window lifted supplies up,
twirling forms of clay and stone down.

An unfinished torso pocked with fist prints
sits on a wooden pedestal in the far corner.
The missing head is pleasant, an escape from eyes.
Edna balances a fern on the uneven neck,
fronds fall to the shoulders. When she leaves,
I will move the pot to a dark corner.

I look out the window as she makes the bed,
ill-fit temperaments and odd elbows evident
in the uncompassed building of the hospital.
Bending over, I frame the moss-covered orchard
in the crane's harp-string cables. Head motionless,
I reach for my box of dusty charcoals.

The sculptor died in a fall from the crane.
Fifty-two years spent in this room undone
by an attendant and an unlocked window.
Edna hands me pills while she tells the story.
His son sued and took all the torsos from the chapel.
He didn't know about the heads, lying face up,
smiling in the brook.

They will move the sculpture tomorrow.
I fit my fist into the marks, my knuckles
brushing against the crumbling edges.
Tonight, I will sketch the torso, placing it
among the trees of the orchard, ignoring
the willows and grassed paths.
Tomorrow, I will draw the crane.

Shari Diane Willadson has been writing for over twenty years.She has been published in The Astrophysicist's Tango Partner Speaks, Moonshade Magazine, Poetry Cafe, and Poetry Magazine. She lives in Washington State, USA, with her husband and daughter.