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Jacob Stratman

We can't draw what we can't see

            For E.S. and ART 2413: Drawing 1 
 
After receiving bad news, I watch  
kids draw still life: plastic paled fruit, dusty  
bottles, leather boxes, lanterns with faux  
finish, copper kettles, everything draped  
in gilded maroon.  Masked students circled,  
spacious music spacing against sickness.   
 
One holds a view finder, leaning  
on her drawing horse, trying to avoid  
men—flaky busts of Homer or Aristotle.  
She has her eye on a clock next to oddly  
shined apples.  Another, off by herself,  
circle adjacent, mines a paper bag landscape —  
ridges and rifts, creases, cracks, crinkles,  
valleys, vaulted lines separating shade and light.   
 
We can all hear the woodpecker: deadwood  
deadwood deadwood.  Late winter branches  
stretch up against darkening blue, waning  
daylight.  A few, near windows,  
look hard, point in competing directions.   
 
A turkey vulture floats above.  Someone calls  
it an eagle.  Too high to differentiate  
baldness.  No one here knows what kills  
trees from the inside, but we all know  
eagles are visible for another month  
or so, and we forgive the mistake.  
Too many buzzards circling all the time,  
you often wish for difference.  
 
In silent breaks, circled and spaced, 
on a cold, late afternoon when light 
is lowering, we attend to what we can’t see 
well—what we mistake for hope.   ​

Biography

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Jacob Stratman’s (he/him) first book of poems, What I Have I Offer With Two Hands, is a part of the Poiema Poetry Series (Cascade, 2019). His most recent poems can be found (or are forthcoming) in The Christian Century, Spoon River Poetry Review, FreezeRay, Wordgathering, Ekstasis, and others.  He lives and teaches in Siloam Springs, AR. 
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ISSN 2639-426X
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    • Issue 27
    • Issue 26
    • Issue 25
    • Issue 24
    • Issue 23
    • Issue 22
    • Issue 21
    • Issue 20
    • Issue 19
    • Issue 18
    • Serenity
    • Issue 17
    • The Audio Room
    • Issue 16
    • Issue 15
    • Issue 14
    • Play It Again
    • Issue 13
    • Issue 12
    • Issue 11
    • Issue 10
    • Issue 9
    • Issue 8
    • Issue 7
    • Issue 6
    • Hand to Mouth
    • Issue 5
    • Issue 4
    • Issue 3
    • Issue 2
    • Issue 1
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