KOURTNEY HICKS

Ekphrasis: /Spoiled/ (2006), A Digital Painting By Linda Bergkvist

I can relate to you, my dear
artist, in your frustration because my
own retaliation against the viewers of our
generation is screaming inside:
So this is how it goes, with my
airbrushed perfection and their lack
of recognition for the tools of my trade
that stiffen my fingers and strain
my patience because these thoughts
don’t fit the canvas, the details
are like an atlas with no compass,
they just flow from my pen onto my tablet
and the programs can only handle so much
until they dismantle the platform
for something updated and better, where
my wireless erection is only useful
for digital sex and I finger-fuck this plastic
(Am I being too graphic?) until I can’t
fantasize anymore-I feel so violated.

I feel in contention, though, with your proclamation
that nature is the master of humanity, because
something inside of me is whispering incessantly
that the reality is we rule with an iron fist
and in this cold war of recklessness
we are responsible for all that is falling
apart, and feathers flutter to the ground,
like dead autumn leaves, revealing skeletons
that we closet behind a wall of oblivion
where it is quaint to call it bliss.

From behind the mask come
demands for attention and it is like
she speaks to me and I am one with the
painting, a victim of my own making-
“He tries, the wind crushing his feathers
until he can’t stand the pressure
and he falls dead to the ground
where the moss and the down hide
what I have lost to you, and your bloody
hands that snap and break the stems
of my red red roses and my
white white daises until nothing remains
of what was this paradise, and my
method of being is bound by the strength
of your lust-“ and I awaken. Yes, I
am shaken by the image there,
just watch her toes curl with pleasure
while time passes unmeasured.

I am reprimanded, because in reality she is me
and I wish that I could be where beauty
seeps like honey from beeswax into her hair
so gold and plaited, crisscrossing like the lace
of her dress, and I wish I could be where beauty
drips like pearls of dew from satin rags which hang
so loose about your hips and grow into the grass,
and I wish that I could be where beauty
shines upon your lips and whispers soft
into your ears that there is no need for loneliness.

If only I could find this place,
it’s a pull, a feeling buried deep inside like the
ache of my courses or when I’m in mourning
and there is no way to describe this deprivation
since I have never been there but I would
caress everything with greasy fingers and I would
probably pluck the leaves from the trees
because this pull is more than a craving
and I am sure there’s no way to sate it.

She is calling to me again, can you
hear now what she is saying?
“See their feathers, plucked by invisible hands
that decayed eyes cannot see to peck and
you would see the bone so white and brittle
if you were not so entangled in delight
from the just one bite of apple that
you stole from my orchard and how it
lies yellow and bruised, scarred by your
perfect teeth, and see their wings as they flake and
break away like dead leaves during autumn days,
let me remind you that you forgot the time
and I am not quite ready for the shift in weather
because it is only Spring and last I checked
only I could change the heading. Even now
my anger is brewing and the skies are storming
but I am sorry to say there is no subtle way to
inform you this is your last warning.

“Can you see as she dances in the song of my dependence
and she is fooled as she consumes me, assuming
that everything belongs to her for pressing
between pages until the binding doesn’t hold.
Perhaps I was too enticing, my ways
were too inviting, she is so pale now
with eyes closed, impossible for butterfly kisses,
my way of insisting to be gentle because I find it
harder every day to restore what is gone.
She is you and if only you could really
see hear feel me, then I could
show you what you have done and try to
find the balance between enslavement by rapture
and enslavement by capture of my creation.”

Let us return again, my dear artist,
to the issue at hand because I do not believe
you understand infatuation is an understatement
of the adoration that I feel for your
deviation and it reminds me of the once
upon a time that was mine and how
the story is always hiding behind the layers
of digital paint lying in wait
while the whole world takes flight.
How can I describe to you what I feel
in this unreality of rationality that
dictates my confusion and maybe
I was wrong but it has
been so long since I could
taste the apple, so I steal with my eyes what I
have always wanted, only your heroine proves
that I am your antagonist because
those things that I lust after only
end up getting trampled by my greed.

I am spoiled, like the apple.