What I am looking at

I had to create an equivalent for what I felt about what I was looking at – not copy it.

Georgia O’Keefe

You are no copy, Ms. O’Keefe

fierce

feline

focussed

defining femtastic

women scripted

to tight lines, hemming curtains,

raising children—kept half awake

in a fake empire,

but you painted new worlds

with regal brush strokes

demonstrated in colour

and in life, there are 

lots of ways

to be a woman

in your later years

staring into the camera

unflinching

free

skin worn and wrinkled. 

hair white and worldly.

____________________

NaPrWriMo prompt: Taking Anne Carson’s translation as an example, we challenge you to write a poem that directly addresses someone , and that includes a made-up word, an odd/unusual simile, a statement of “fact,” and something that seems out of place in time (like a Sonny & Cher song in a poem about a Greek myth).

Georgia O'Keefe, Nature Forms