Issue 20: Laynie Browne
Painting is a Name for Moving Surfaces
When I cannot find lavender-dusk emptiness—of libraries
faces and names, subtle organs, that which you make
invisible painting is the unseen—becoming sight
Images are triggers— realms we dare not name—theory baffles thorns
claws hair, wakes along wandering books—sleb, slepaz, sepal-sleep
Window-gold mistaking water for folded notes—to invisible plum trees
Some artists write the illegible to make misunderstanding
real— to name the places we lack. I don’t
believe in lanced color, separate from ether, spindrift
She read to waters, nightly
They lay together speaking in lines from books
as if darkness were those spines opening, turning, closing
Take a picture of the middle of the page
begin with fortunetelling, fold
slips, shapes, bokiz, beech—that books were once trees
birch and ash, librum, inner bark of grove
We—as ruined garments (wrote from painting)
(look-look into rivers, garments, eyes, and sew)
We’d drunk only air
To paint in collage, kaleidoscopic gear, in foaming fonts
I only know how to spell sounds, not words
to converse with spun air
Painting is a mane for moving surfaces
Painting is a name for unlaced water
Lit beneathe
Painting is a name
Spell yourself of scents
letters, dirt memorabilia
crushed over the body
bath of irregular speech
Painting is anointing inner
lids— eyes-blink and close
Seeing is memory we ignore
when sung, when drowned, upended
bridges water names
Painting is color petting a body
mornings never unclasp
Diligent tongue arched
spider, gossamer
lilac hand-frond
Laynie Browne is author of thirteen collections of poems and three novels. Recent books include You Envelop Me (Omnidawn 2017), Periodic Companions (Tinderbox 2018) and The Book of Moments (Presses universitaires de Rouen et du Havre, 2018). Her honors include a 2014 Pew Fellowship, the National Poetry Series Award (2007) for her collection The Scented Fox, and the Contemporary Poetry Series Award (2005) for her collection Drawing of a Swan Before Memory. Her poetry has been translated into French, Spanish, Chinese and Catalan. She teaches at University of Pennsylvania and at Swarthmore College.
