Deborah Chow Strozier

Model
 
She could be any woman. She knows that I do not want to know her. Her silence is sweeter than a violin. All I want to do is paint her. Paint her dark eyes. Seize her bright lips. Sweep her flesh across the canvas. I want to paint her like a Madonna with an infant Christ. Catch the beauty of pale skin on bristles. Watch oils and pigments toss light.   
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I do not want to know her body aches. I do not care if her back aches and tilting her head in a three quarter pose makes her wince. I want to own her skin, flesh, and dark eyes that stare back. Her eyes haunt my dreams. I can only paint her like a master in my dreams. This mirror, my flat canvas of life,  does not lie. How many layers of truth fill a canvas?  If only I could paint with my eyes instead of a fumbling hand.  
  
I do not want to hear her voice. I cannot hear its sensual lilt and soft moans. All I want is the sweep of the brush, stroking her body and flesh onto the canvas. Breathe life into her figure. Body, breasts, legs splash across my canvas as if her life, her soul, and image could dwell in its surface.  

Once I thought she sat next to me in church. She wore a black dress. A black hat and veil pulled aside to reveal her face. She gave a slight smile.  

**

Self-Portrait
 
There is something more to know about my face. What image that lies behind my face, my sketch, and my charcoaled hair. The lines are rough in the sketch over a decade old. My face once smooth and wrinkle free as the paper’s surface.  

Once I wanted to forget the naming of my eyes, nose, and mouth. I followed the curves of my nose and  penumbra of my upper lip. My hair was jet black, not streaked with sliver strands of wisdom.  The wisdom I am still waiting for. Her eyes are not alive, the vacant stare emanating from a flat surface.  

Who is this shy ghost sketched in? It is not me. Even now my face is more lovely than the drawing who has not aged. Her eyebrows higher and thicker than mine fake surprise. Her nose retraced over and over again. Erased and redrawn like the past.

**
 
Fear
 
I no longer want the scent of paint and turpentine, sweeps of cobalt blues, and red glint. I dip the brush over and over in some ritual. My hand trembles. My hunger fades after staring at the model’s eyes, mouth, and body for hours. A tiger dies under the heat of passion. I cannot paint what I see.     
  
Is this some strange confession?  Truth as haunting as forgetting how to write my name in Chinese.  The shame of forgetting strokes of wet ink. Sleek strokes grow harsher with memories.  

Staring into the mirror, I cannot sketch my face into a two dimensional twin. The eyes, nose, and mouth tremble with what I seize—an intense gaze and nothing more.

**
 
To Georgia O’Keeffe
 
I cannot escape the voice of your flowers. Head of the orchid, its petals spread silken folds like another galaxy. An egg cracks to share its yolk. Each flower, each stroke of paint sweeps into a constellation. A small world reflected in the eyes of flies and bees. This world is more than pollination or casual sex. Bees hover in their world until they touch mine.   
I fear your flowers. The heads, secret whispers, cascade of petals swirling into another nebula, each blossom unfolding into a new world, a new life. White trumpet, poppies, and calla lilies carry their own colour, own song. Voices more resonant than a thin soprano’s voice cracking the air.  

** 
 
Boxes                                                         
 
I knock. Sometimes you won’t answer. Sometimes you crack open the door and peak out with matted hair. Your dim eyes long to nestle in the pillow clouds and blankets still warm from your naps.  

Another crash of a computer program. Another day without research.   
 
Six years have passed. You still won’t leave this dorm. Your shadowed view overlooks a  dumpster; the scent of trash and darkened cabbage drifts through your window. Sunlight barely filters in.  Cardboard boxes stack in walls around your narrow bed and desk. Boxes crammed with the past: climbing ropes, sleeping bags, cameras, worn photographs where my fingers still linger. Towels and shirts lounge on a bicycle. Somewhere lurks the yellowed pages of your dissertation.  
  
I want to kiss. You wince and crumple in faded jeans onto the bed. You want the girls who whisper every day and night in sweetened e-mails. Glowing white words sweep across a black sky.  

*

This poem first appeared in Loch Raven Review.

**
 
Picking Dandelions
 
All I can recall is the scent of my mother and her carrying me onto a large field of grass and bursts of dandelions. Bright yellow blooms she picks for me.  I pick for her.  Isn’t this what love is all about? We keep picking and weaving them into necklaces around our necks and around our heads. I place a few blossoms in my mouth. I spit out the bitterness.  Every morning and every afternoon we go to the green grass and pick dandelions. Sometimes clovers.  We always count the leaves wanting more than three, never finding four. Sometimes we pick fluffy white dandelions. We blow the seeds swirling into the wind. Sometimes my mother tells me that it is good luck to blow them far away until they settle and grow another field of dandelions. Sometimes she tells me that this is the meaning of life and dreams before I go to bed. Every evening I see the white seeds turn into the stars, the galaxy of stars where she points out the North Star and the Big Dipper.  The whirl of stars blaze in my dreams at night until I am no longer alone. Until I no longer need to cry out for her. Until I can sleep through the night, and I know the difference between sleeping, dreaming, and the vivid blaze of real life.  

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Deborah Chow Strozier is a Chinese American Poet. She is working on an ekphrastic chapbook. She won second place in the Salon 2008 Chapbook Competition for Lotus Leaves, published by Pudding House. Poetry was published in The Bitter Oleander, Hawai’i Pacific Review, Cricket Magazine, Ibbettson Street Press, The Ekphrastic Review, and others. Poetry is forthcoming in OSU Urban Arts Space Artist Commune Journal Issue Two. She served as the Vice-President of the Ohio Poetry Association (OPA). She is starting an ekphrastic poetry program for OPA. She has worked 25 years as a Research Scientist at an international nutritional food company.