Art at All Costs

There have been times when my mouth is all the arsenal I need
to prove my point, to paint my presence loud and clear to all who
hear that I am not someone to fuck with. My tongue licks the rage
right out of my rended heart and spews it like a catapult over the
barricade of my existence to the unsuspecting lovers and grocery
clerks below. There have also been times when my feet have
carried me out of the mire of marriage and myth that childhood
makes, stomping on blades of grass and cockroaches and great
saviors who would lash their love to my ankles in great blocks of
cement set in cornerstones of homes. I wielded these weapons with
abandon, eye for an eye, certain there was no more magnanimous
purpose for them than to crush the curious, obliterate the ignorant,
annihilate the angels who dared to hope my mouth and limbs would
caress and care for them.
                                       And then, one day, I glimpsed the reflection
of a spring green barn in a Winter Lake playing hide and seek with
white. And I stepped closer to feel the flutter of a great blue heron
lifting from the stick of a mossy log, peaceful as dragonflies sipping
summer from the scrim of a pond. Or maybe it was Graceful Landing,
something foreign to my gnashing teeth and unruly extremities.
And as I looked more closely at the way the artist shaded sun into
sheaves of wheat and Magic Morning over boats bobbing blissfully
in the turning tide, I wept my first words of love into that painter’s lips
crowded with brush and purpose, that sketcher’s feet too busy with the
resurrection of daffodils and the silk of willows to do anything but dance.


Winter Lake mouthpainted by Trevor Wells
Graceful Landing mouthpainted by Tony Ryals
Magic Morning mouthpainted by Edward Brill
Easter Blessings footpainted by Günther Holzapfel

Kim M. Baker is the writing coach at Roger Williams University School of Law in Bristol, RI. Also an advocate to end violence against women, Kim has performed in the Until the Violence Stops Festival Providence: 2008 and 2009. She has been published in Ascent Aspirations, Nimble Spirit, The Writers' Circle Anthology 2008, Canadian Federation of Poets, River Poets’ Journal, New England Writers Network, The Poetry Loft, and forthcoming in Tribute to Orpheus2. In November 2008, Kim won an honorable mention in the Poetry Society of New Hampshire National Contest, and her essay “Truth” was broadcast in January 2009 on National Public Radio of Rhode Island.

Email: Kim M. Baker

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