Jim Doran Response Pieces:
Blue Women, Acrylic Paint in sketchbook/illustration board
The test is over. Turn in your pencil. Hand it over.
You get an automatic A for trying. Nothing more to do.
This is just a test
By Cassie Premo Steele
Inspiration Piece
I am the blue woman, the do-woman, the woman so tired
she cannot even look at you. I look instead at the corners
of life, at the bottles and books and things cooked and
uncooked in the strife. Haiti, Michael Jackson, what
happened to John Mayer, that woman without tenure,
adjunct pay, family leave, my husband’s brother who
had a heart operation they need to do over– these things
wake me in the middle of the night. So I start to write.
Pen and ink or a computer, it doesn’t matter, as long
as I am leaving the do-woman behind and becoming
the blue woman, step by step, word by word, time
after time. I once taught a woman how to be in time
instead of on time, and she learned the lesson so well
she left me. This is just a test, I told myself, adrift,
we are all just practicing, no need to get testy, keep
going, don’t let life get to me. And then I stopped.
I looked at you finally. Life always gets to us
eventually. Who am I kidding? We all wake up.
We all take up another breath. Otherwise, we’d all
turn blue. Time to rest, blue woman, you said to me.
_____
Response pieces:
Blue Women, Acrylic Paint in sketchbook/illustration board
The test is over. Turn in your pencil. Hand it over.
You get an automatic A for trying. Nothing more to do.
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