2008/11 | 16.5"x6.25" | walnut and india ink
three-panel illustrated poem based on a trip to the farmer's market.
the text reads:
A man stands still and the market comes to him.
He wishes for berries and he gets them.
He dreams up onions, and they appear.
He no sooner thinks 'grapes,' than they are $1.29/lb by his elbow.
Everything bright and grubby and glorious flocks to him and slumps in heaps around his knees
Like precious gems, but useful.
Like precious gems, but beautiful.
Like precious gems, in no way at all
But for the care with which they are selected and the ease with which they can
Be overlooked
Or overwhelm
When arranged so artlessly in piles.
To this man, it is all precious and delicate and tragic, because he is there when the market is not, and he knows the cold hollow dried-gourd silence of empty stalls, the terrible stillness and bleak
Before the air erupts in plums and cabbage leaves