Selections from Bellevue Literary Review, Fall 2001

Art

Eric Nelson

October, a woman and a boy, a tumor
overtaking his brain, draw pictures
in the waiting room.

She makes a red apple as round
as a face.  Then from her hand a cloud
grows and darkens over the apple

until the crayon breaks inside
its wrapper and hangs like a snapped
neck from her bloodless fingertips.

He’s drawn two stick-figures
up to their necks in falling gold
leaves, their heads all smiles.

It’s you and daddy, he tells her.
Above them a flock of m’s
fly toward a grinning sun.

When she doesn’t answer
he says on Halloween he’d like
to be a horse with orange wings.

Staring at his picture, she says
It looks like Thanksgiving.
Where are you?

He taps the sun. I’m shining on you.
She hugs him as if trying
to press him back inside her.

I’m not crying, she whispers.
He looks over her shoulder.
I’m not crying, too.

First published in the Bellevue Literary Review Fall 2001. Rights owned by author.

Eric Nelson is an Associate Professor in the Writing and Linguistics Department at Georgia Southern University.  His published poetry collections include The Interpretation of Waking Life and The Light Bringers. Individual poems have appeared in many periodicals and anthologies, such as Poetry, The Evansville Review, and A New Geography of Poets.  He lives in Statesboro, Georgia, with his wife and two children.