the art student’s left leg

In “the art student’s left leg”

we find a paralysis; an absence of motion;

a cold form element of a specific anatomy.

Its immediate creator is the hard pencil.

Its initial creator is the being, the human being

who creates then wanders off to the history of art

where everybody’s clothed and chatty

with prescribed books of art on their laps.

These books will assist in the conversation

inside the studio where art history is taught.

Yesterday it might’ve been the renaissance;

the Italian one. There are others.

The art student sits among his peers

with two legs, although the amputated

left leg sits on a page in a large pad of paper:

Strathmore. A lightly textured heavy mil.

Good stuff from the finest stand of trees

cut-down from the far-side of the world.

Possibly. Could've been Maine or Oregon.

Next time I’ll draw the right cheek of my ass.

I’ll call it “the art student’s right cheek of his ass”

and soon I’ll have a whole man made in my image!

I’ve been told this is how the God worked the form of man.

But his man is formed in clay. A messier medium, unless

the student artist is left-handed and working in charcoal.