Easel

Illustration by Brian Turner

Easel

Nathere loads the brush with river-blue oil,
mixes it with yellow cadmium and stone
to paint a sky made of light and dust,
where ravens fly and date palms open
in a burst of green, with no trunks
painted in to hold them, the shiny fronds
drifting like epiphytes on the wind.
Nathere pauses, unsure.

There is too much heat.
Figures of people
fade into a canvas blur,
mere phantasms of paint,
their features unrecoverable, their legs
disappearing beneath them as Nathere realizes—
there are no shadows to hold them down,
no slant and fall of shadow,
light’s counterpoint, the dark processing
of thought.

All burns in light here,
all rises in heat as colored tongues
lift in flame,
brushstroke by brushstroke,
an erasure the sky washes out in blue.


Not all of the poems I wrote were about the fighting taking place, or the even clearly about the wartime experience itself.

For example, I wrote “Easel” in late spring of 2004, when we were part of a task force stationed north and south of Baghdad. Our job at the time was to escort and protect huge supply convoys through Baghdad. While staying at the southern fire base, I bought a painting made by a Baghdad artist. It’s now framed and hung above the desk in my office.

I come from California’s San Joaquin valley, a place that gets fairly hot in the summertime. June through August, you can drive out on any country road and often see heat waves rising off the asphalt in the distance. This painting is ironic in the sense that, in a country that is incredibly grounded in its connections to place and history, the summer heat visually lifts distant colors and shapes in a way that seems to erase those connections.

Many of the poems I wrote in Iraq, like this one, were attempts to learn about this historically and culturally rich country, as I was experiencing it.

Brian Turner