A POEM by ESMÉ KAPLAN-KINSEY
Bison
or are they deer? the ones we’ve been painting forever on the cave walls? with the hooves and the hides and all that prey-fear wound tight inside their loping bodies? or horses, for that matter, they could be horses. eyes rolled back in the socket like they’ve been asked an unanswerable question. and the smell off them—that dusty animal smell! when bison ran across the hills I bet the whole sky smelled like that. the ground all rippled across with hoof marks. that’s what I'm drawing, here on the sidewalk, bison / horses / deer, because the next door neighbors’ kids have neglected to clean up their chalk art project and the gray pavement is pinked out like the most perfect dawn, strewn with broken color, and because I am the antonym of artist and nothing I make comes out like how it looks in the simple mindless strokes of my subconscious. but crouched here on this curb, leg cramping fingers smudged blue, I am satisfied. they look like prehistoric things, don’t they, these wandering lines of chalk? like I can imagine the campfire spitting into the dark and nothing to do but watch those shadows make the animals almost-not-quite run across the ceiling of the cave. I've got nothing to do but watch the news when I go home, those distant shadows of vital moments I’ll never see in real life, so I'm taking my sweet time. I've got orange chalk, and pale green, and there’s a herd of chalk-animals pawing up chalk dust here in the street. there’s nowhere to walk for all these stamping hooves. I haven’t drawn a thing since I was a child. never saw the point. my time put towards more suitable, technical, money-making work. yet I remember those ink-smudged forms so vividly now, unlikely creatures crowding into the margins of my spelling primer, all eagles’ wings and fire breath and im/possibility.
Esmé Kaplan-Kinsey (they/them) is a California transplant attending college in Portland, Oregon. Their work has been recognized by the National YoungArts Foundation, the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards, and appears or is forthcoming in publications such as Gone Lawn, fifth wheel press, and No Contact Mag. They are a mediocre guitarist, an awe-inspiring procrastinator, and an awful swimmer. They can be found on Instagram and Twitter @esmepromise.