Art with a Heart by Vienna Wagner
“Give me more
blue,” says the girl
whose corn
rowed braids coil beneath
the collar
of her uniform blouse. Hands outstretched,
she grabs for
cerulean scraps, hoping the tattered
paper can
transform her collage of black
and neon green into
sky.
Sydney with
turquoise glasses stares
across her
pasted page while glue coats
her acrylic
daisy nails. Noticing her white
horizon, I tear
more colored construction
strips, but she
tells me today is overcast
and pushes the
pile away.
I peel plastic
from purple glue sticks,
but shreds keep
collecting on the concrete
floor of this
hundred- year-old boiler room
splattered with
finger-paint and splintering cracks.
Across the
table, Allison coils her honey
hair in circlets
thumb-wide and talks of Tennessee
hills she
sketches so steep that houses have no space
to stand on the
sides. “How can anyone live there?”
I ask, but she
gives no answer, only clutches a charcoal
pencil and draws
a cluster of specks
in a valley
below.
