I molded grainy ocher with dirty newsprint made thumbprint cheekbones over wire frames built peaks of pigment listened to the whop snap of the canvas’s answer
my eyes were green & untumbled set in shaded sockets like black-out curtains drawn against a messy house
he found me an undiscovered element by melting granite ore he uncovered he revealed he discovered he found he came from a long line of casual conquerors
did I see the context of ages swift stroke of sable line & scale layers of excavated azurite & cochineal crimson the masters used
did I see where the canvas indents just there & there he would take my form and make it function he would make my talent perform for him
he would train my agate eyes put his net over my flitting fingers pin them to the straight white board for study & display
Mo Lynn Stoycoff 's work has appeared in Intima, Rise Up Review, South Broadway Ghost Society, California Quarterly, Speckled Trout Review, and other journals and anthologies. Mo works in the performing arts and lives on the colonized land of the Patwin people in Central California.