Angus McEwan, Lost Treasure (Artist Website, Social Media Links)
Watercolor on Fabriano paper
What I wanted to see was bare eyeballs
and miles of nerves
the stomach in its blood cocoon
A fascination of plastic
she was tall and shiny-skinned She towered
over the horses on the shelf so heavy
she would have broken them
so she wasn’t my kind of woman
But she acquiesced to the glue’s small nozzle
fixing what wouldn’t stay
inside her crowded cavities
She was either / or a freedom junkie light transparent
as strong as bones and viscera or stuck
with a baby in her pouch
the suckling already starting
Modest hair to hide her brain Nothing up
between her legs but barely a cleft
a holding tank for small mysterious organs
I didn’t want her pregnant
This had happened to so many
kicked out graduating late
I was nine and babies
were nothing to play with
By the time she got her guts, her belly wouldn’t fit
I had to use the pregnant one
so now she was always a question
how far along? who’s the daddy?
does he know? why don’t you stop eating, sweetie?
She stood ill fitted ill suited
I didn’t know what to do with her she needed
a job or something She and I would talk late nights
She wanted a drink but no place to put it
She wanted maybe a man but nowhere to lie
on that hard plank of pine the stuffed animals
eyeing her up and down
my little fingerprinty hands taking her off the shelf
and stroking her hard hair telling her
it’s OK, tall old baby
I’ll just unsnap your overtight belly
and make it better for a while
which you could never do
if you were real