Poems and Art from "Heart to Heart": Dove, Russell and Marisol

These poems are from Heart to Heart: New Poems Inspired by Twentieth-Century American Art, (2001) edited by Jan Greenberg.

A Word

That Red One, Arthur Dove, 1944

by Gary Gildner

Give me I said to those round

young faces a round word

and they looked at me

fully puzzled until finally

several cried What do you mean?

I mean I said round round

you know about round

and Oh yes they said but

give us examples!

Okay I said let’s have a

square word

square maybe

will lead us to round.

And they groaned

they groaned and they frowned

every one except one

little voice way in the back said

Toast.

Standing Buffalo, Charles M. Russell, circa 1920

The Bison Returns

by Tony Johnston

Midnight and the world so cold.

The sky is holding snow.

On the stone flank of a buried cave

an old fire-smear awakes

and walks out, down the drifted miles,

down the smothered hills.

It steps into the yard to graze

just as snow begins

falling soundless in a dream

upon the shaggy ghost.

What will I say to keep it here?

What song will I sing?

The Family, Marisol, 1962

Breaking Away from the Family

by Susan Terris

I’m there. See me in yellow? Not the short one


with no visible arms. That’s my sister.


I’m the frowning-smiling girl, eyeing the family.


See us? Sister, Sister, Mother, Baby. Then Brother, 


at his board-like best, standing in too-big overalls


trying to be Papa. We’re caught there, 


nailed and glued to a door with no house,


a door that won’t open. Only my half-laced


boots are real. The rest: flat-tinted,

an odd two dimensional, one-handed girl.

The part of met that’s broken away


has grown tall, drives a car, goes to work, lives


in a house with a real door. She’s warm


and full-fleshed and dances with boys under


a flower moon. But the splintered girl I was


keeps coming back, returns me here


to stare at Mother’s pork sausage fingers,


At her dress with its bear-claw flowers.


Overhead, black scrolls hold her and them


like curved iron bars of a jail insisting.

You may never leave


or charge or be part of any family

except this one staring helplessly outward.


Papa will not return.


Brother will not become Papa.

Baby will always be propped in Mother’s lap.

Sister will never find her arms.


The five of us will always be


the last picture Papa saw before he went,


a stiff wooden portrait left behind.