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Still Life
- Southern Illinois University Press
- Chapter
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Still Life How things come to light as I draw them: the curved-wire stem of that flower which, until my eye moved to the prill of dried petal and past that to the dead sepal and then down to the stalk, I didn’t see. I can draw that, prill, which is both the look and the sound that piece would make, if it could, the way a thumbnail skimming comb tines sings this small-spoked bunch of reeds. An unfolded letter flying into a stack-spill of paper is one of the movements of my house, like the flowers’ upward flourish. The book’s deckle, rough like slate makes the metal sound of water dripping as the pencil dips and dips, marking its shadows. What else must be happening in this room? I want to throw it all out for one note, a leaf in the center of the floor. But below the curve of the bottle neck, far at the table’s edge, the tubed-out whelk startles in its whiteness, reflecting more light than it can possibly gain from dusk— the phosphorescence of paper, but more pure, and organic as skin as though life were in it still. It causes this sweet rolling forward, like the crown of a shell: a gentle pressure to work. 56 ...