I’ve Been Following You on Instagram
- After Leonora Carrington’s painting Self Portrait and her short story The Debutante
Leonora Carrington, your eerie
paintings with mirrors,
your pet hyena, keep popping
up on my feed, fueling my hunger
for a new year of writing.
Maybe you’re laughing right now
while outside it’s raining,
surrealistic strokes down the glass,
fallen branches as I watch
how you pictured yourself
on a blue chair, a red cushion
tangled hair, wild wolf-self
newly given birth,
both of you gazing towards me.
In the distance the galloping
horse goes off to the forest.
Maybe you’re laughing as I listen
to the story you wrote
about your beast surrogate
who went to the ball,
the bat that flew out the window,
about your mother
who never understood.
Did that lead to what came
later when they carried
you off, locked you up,
thought you’d lost your mind?
The price of your art was more
than the brief cry you made
when you dared to run away
with your love. Often these days
I wake from dreams, fall asleep
forgetting. I’m always missing
my mother who every day
would escape from the world
by finding her way into clouds
that were mountains.
Just like you she was eighteen
that year you wrote your story.
She never went into a mental
hospital but two of her daughters
and her first husband did.
Later she flowered, lost all
her memories, found just the right
wild company to keep.
I’m listening to you both
telling the story, swooshing
in the wind, tearing things down,
saying something else could happen.
Note: This poem was published by The MacGuffin, Spring/Summer 2023
Karen Marker is a San Francisco/Bay Area poet and essayist whose writing draws on her studies in psychology, classical mythology, and religion. Her writing is often personal, exploring themes of family, mental illness, mortality, and loss as seen through the lens of the natural world. Her work has recently been published in The MacGuffin, won awards through the Ina Coolbrith Circle and been included in the Kent State University May 4th Archives.
- After Leonora Carrington’s painting Self Portrait and her short story The Debutante
Leonora Carrington, your eerie
paintings with mirrors,
your pet hyena, keep popping
up on my feed, fueling my hunger
for a new year of writing.
Maybe you’re laughing right now
while outside it’s raining,
surrealistic strokes down the glass,
fallen branches as I watch
how you pictured yourself
on a blue chair, a red cushion
tangled hair, wild wolf-self
newly given birth,
both of you gazing towards me.
In the distance the galloping
horse goes off to the forest.
Maybe you’re laughing as I listen
to the story you wrote
about your beast surrogate
who went to the ball,
the bat that flew out the window,
about your mother
who never understood.
Did that lead to what came
later when they carried
you off, locked you up,
thought you’d lost your mind?
The price of your art was more
than the brief cry you made
when you dared to run away
with your love. Often these days
I wake from dreams, fall asleep
forgetting. I’m always missing
my mother who every day
would escape from the world
by finding her way into clouds
that were mountains.
Just like you she was eighteen
that year you wrote your story.
She never went into a mental
hospital but two of her daughters
and her first husband did.
Later she flowered, lost all
her memories, found just the right
wild company to keep.
I’m listening to you both
telling the story, swooshing
in the wind, tearing things down,
saying something else could happen.
Note: This poem was published by The MacGuffin, Spring/Summer 2023
Karen Marker is a San Francisco/Bay Area poet and essayist whose writing draws on her studies in psychology, classical mythology, and religion. Her writing is often personal, exploring themes of family, mental illness, mortality, and loss as seen through the lens of the natural world. Her work has recently been published in The MacGuffin, won awards through the Ina Coolbrith Circle and been included in the Kent State University May 4th Archives.
