Arts and Crafts
art by Virgil Suárez
by Steven Dampf
I forage for leaves and fallen bark in the park. Looks like an old face. I’ll make a sculpture, and become acquainted with it, the shedded skin from the still-breathing cherry blossoms. I’ll lay the pink flowers over a plate of paste and dry it into paper for my poetry, and melt whatever’s left into soy wax for a candle. Light it during my moments that turn out as defining moments, and one day associate the aroma with this stage in my young life. I hear a crunch…my foot feels a crunch. It’s broken glass. I can work with this too. Stuff what’s scavengeable of this beer bottle into my backpack. I’ll glue its pieces into panes, create a frame of wood, and wear them as sunglasses. Immortalize a drunken night to make it glorious…a night of which I know only two details…that they drank a beer and they broke the bottle…and to me they’ll be drunk forever when I see the world through their intoxicated eyes. There’s a forgotten flannel in the dirt. Most likely been there a while. But none of this is junk to me. I’ll take it home, cut a little square, patch it on my shirt, and wear it like upcycled armor. I see sun-dried fibers a ways away that blow in the wind like misaligned swords wielded by lost soldiers. I can fetch them to twist into twine. I’ll drill holes in the marble pebbles by the rocks over there and thread them along, then string it on my body. Give what’s left of the dirty blades and boulders a greater purpose once again. I continue walking, musing along. Scoop some grass and dirt into a bag, so I can bring out pleasing pigments in paints. And what next? Record the white noise in the meadow, so I can play it back for myself as I fall asleep, and scout here forever, ingratiated in nature’s dream.
At home I dump the whole backpack into a pile. I lay it all out on my counter and start making things. I use my mortar and pestle and a whittle knife. An iron, a hot glue gun, and a mini drill. I conceptualize knots, sketch circles, and mix in fabric medium with paint brushes. I am being very thoughtful. Thread a needle through cloth, as if a butterfly IV accessing something matterful. I paint, and watch the paint dry.
Everything’s all made now and the day is over. I feel so bad that I feel liberated. What a dark place to heal. And what a dark place to have become wounded. I’m sitting on the floor in my new clothes and decor, surrounded by poorly-lit tapestries, breathing in a candle, studying my sculpture, and listening to sounds of the outdoors. It’s all mud. All these crafts are mud. I’m tired now. I see the world through the sunglass’s drunk refractions as I sweep my hands around the mess. I’m a slaughtered cow moaning, brushing the crisp fireflies in the evening wallow, wondering, wondering why she doesn’t come pick me up, take me home, clean me, and make me into something I wasn’t before. I’ll disappear into the mud if she doesn’t see these things I made for her, but these arts and crafts of mine are everything she’s never loved.
Steven Dampf is from New York City. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in HAD, Consequence, Eclectica, and elsewhere. His website is https://paa.ge/stevendampf
Virgil Suárez was born in Havana, Cuba, in 1962. At the age of twelve he arrived in the United States. He received an MFA from Louisiana State University in 1987. He is the author of eight collections of poetry, most recently 90 MILES: SELECTED AND NEW, published by the University of Pittsburgh Press. His work has appeared in a multitude of magazines and journals internationally. His 10th volume of poetry, THE PAINTED BUNTING’S LAST MOLT, was be published by the University of Pittsburgh Press in the Spring of 2020. He is also the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Grant and an Individual Artist Grant from the State of Florida and a Latino Book Prize.
