from Drawing Water by Eva Heisler

Take the horizon line, for example
a mirage—

that marks the limit of sight.

I shade squares while I wait                      
for the phone to ring. I draw boxes while  
I listen to a lover                                        
complain about his bowels. I draw
circles inside boxes. I divide 
circles into quarters; I add 
a circle to each quarter; 
another square. 
The patterns, 
like the carpet pages of Irish monks, 
mean to bewilder evil thoughts.

The line break is hesitation or resistance or acquiescence 
or a tiny rip in the mesh of a screen door.

Lines may multiply as cracks across the surface of an old painting 
or lines may measure and slice like a butcher’s cleaver.

White synonyms.

K’s aberrant periods revoke transparency.

This must be done with a brush, but a brush, 
soft at the point, 
causes such uncertainty in the touch of an unpracticed hand 
that it is not possible 
to make a last dark certain 
mark 
.

memory:

kneeling beneath a table
                                        trying 
to cover the underside 
with blue crayon

this was drawing was movement of the arm back
and forth across                                                                                

pine boards / no sky 
no star / arm / back blue / forth blue

memory:

late afternoon, September, the smell of chalk dust, 
the smell of an overripe banana 
and Sam popping gum in time to “Black Magic Woman” 
I saw “negative space” 
saw that triangle between the curve of a 
hip and an arm 
another triangle between spread legs 
I drew the contours of an emptiness and a body emerged 
the world was charged with negative space 
mother’s 
spatula-bearing body was an interruption in negative space 
my sister, working the cherry pitter, 
was a wheezing rupture in negative space 
lying in bed, 
the body was breach in negative space