Abstract Painting

Your latest painting is chaotically abstract

and it draws me in at first,

but I find myself looking

at the lamps illuminating it instead.

You'd told me how you had to

wire the cord switches yourself

after your divorce, not

sure if you could do it;

and I picture the girl you once were

who played with Legos in the 70s

building houses out of red and blue.

There was always a fireplace

and an area for your dolls to sit in the back yard

next to the garage where the Ken doll

changed the plugs on the station wagon.

And just now as the roiling pigment and brush strokes

of your untitled painting flick out at me like

an electrical fire,

I think I can see a coil of smoke

the way a child draws an ascending curlicue

from a chimney top,

then the sound of a wrench slipping

and the fierce curses

of a man who skinned his knuckles.