Jason Silverstein

How Splatter Paint Turned to Aubade

Shaped like a broken arrow or cross,

You rig these sticks and trowels to drip,

Slur, and slash paint onto a canvas,

Tacked and hitched to the wall. You stir,

Finger, work in all the shades of remembering,

To see how colors impugn and distort,

Like years of wanting restructures desire,

Or how life can be reduced to one visceral moment

When one mistake stopped you from living

The one life you always wanted. It did. But now

You see how much of the color survives,

What shades remain unscathed. And if there is

Happiness or wisdom in your rhythms of smear and splatter,
Perhaps it is the sharpness of knowing this one image

No matter how damaged, is the one you have designed,

Which, by rights, is the one you have the power to paint over.