A collaboration

Karen Lynn Williams and I got to know each other when we were paired up by our editor, Dorothy Briley, to do a book together.  Karen and Steve, her husband, lived and worked in Malawi as Peace Corps volunteers, and Karen had written Galimoto. We have continued to work together on several projects and have visited each other in Haiti, New York and most recently in France where I persuaded Karen to join my life drawing class. 

Here is her account of the evening:

The Nude

Figure drawing class, France

It is the delicate features;

Nose and mouth and brows

Which the artist sees.

The model, naked

wears a studied malaise

larger than life, she is “full”

a kind word.

Look at her fingers,

The artist says,

beautiful and the wisps of curl

about her face, beautiful

breasts full to her waist

if one could see

the waist in her folds.

The artist does not see the scar;

the nude has had her stomach

shrunken(for a short time

as these things seem to go)

the folds of flesh cascade to

thighs larger than two of mine,

each.

The artist says

try a wash, fill it with color,

you see the design

there on her robe interesting, no?

Negative space,

the turn of her neck,

the angle of her chin.

Five minute poses

 like a poem, no?

 the artist says

a new pose

the figure turns away

arms thrown up, head tilted

bold angle and arc of her back

draw the eye

to light at play with the dark twist of her neck

to form lines thick and thin in turn

flow across the page

the back a soft milk white roundness

the texture of the nude

her arms swing down

and a slender finger tip dips just so
toward the dusk silk pillow on the floor.