Slow Death of the Generic Tree Drawing

by Gabrielle Avena

 

             After Wong Shih Yaw and Safia Elhilo

 

If it’s okay,   I would like to start with the tree,
     tenderlined and      vanishing.
 
  Focus your eyes on the leaves
       which are not     leaves   as much as 
             they are   bushels        which are not   bushels
       as much as they are   clots    of cotton fiber
           melting into one   another.
 
  You cannot find a single leaf
                  but perhaps a brushstroke,     echoing.
 
      As if a waterfall
 could flow in     reverse
 the liquid strokes        seem
    to stream     into bark, 
     forms linearize,      grooves begin
          to bump and edge     together, 
     they follow the flow        of gravity,
           all the way down into
 
  
                   A toothed edge grasps     at pale sky.  Soaks in         
                         pale silence     as the tree first fails        
                             to resume.  Instead, the tree   fades,
               is fading as your eye        trails the page.
 
    Underneath,             a chopped tree, 
                                          stump smooth, top curving
       a perfect oval,     a closed mouth.  
  
 Perhaps  it is simply the same tree
      at another  point in time,    somehow occupying
  the same plane,    or perhaps they are 
 two separate trees       on two separate planes    
  indistinguishable in their sea   of gray.
 
 Even the clouds are    ash
not white,   as they tell you    in school, 
       as they weave the  myth  of purity,
   as they guide your hands    to the pack of crayons 
         and the roughness of construction    paper.
 
     Reach back––
 
                        [When did you learn to draw a tree?]
    
                 [Did always you start       with the trunk?
                             Was it always      brown?]
 
            [Did the leaves ever clot      like cotton,
                     or clouds that got    stuck on their way
      through the sky?]  Perhaps     the tree
             has only ever known  its reality      folded flat.
 
       Perhaps,      this time,  the tree is simply
  forgetting itself   for a moment, 
          and perhaps     we should let it.

 

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