Charlotte M. Friedman

The First Time I Painted

my father handed me a brush 
nodded toward a canvas, as if to say—
you know what to do. I was six.

I dipped the brush in blue, made a bowl
of sky to hold stars, the earth green
like the pines outside my window.

Anything else? my father asked.
A house on the hill, a porch and a girl
with a triangle of yellow hair, red dress.

The house poked through the sky,
so the girl with the yellow hair
would have her head in the clouds

except it was sunny, I’d decided, and painted the sun—
swirled circle, squiggly rays, same yellow
as my hair. From the porch the girl could see

the sea. Doesn’t it need a railing? She might fall.
She wouldn’t, but I painted those brown stripes
to keep him happy. I knew she could swim

if she happened to fall. She might even jump.
She might even be able to fly.
Something had traveled through blood,

his to mine—some desire for world-making,
shaping on rectangles of white.
My hands were not his, but I held the brush.

Charlotte M. Friedman is a poet, teacher and translator who grew up in Seattle and now lives in Princeton, New Jersey. Her poetry has been published in journals such as Connecticut River Review, Intima, Waterwheel Review, The Maine Review, Nightingale & Sparrow, Lilith and in the anthology, A 21st Century Plague: Poetry from a Pandemic. Her translations of Ch’ol poetry (with Carol Rose Little) have been published in Latin American Literature Today, World Literature Today, Exchanges, North Dakota Quarterly and The Arkansas International.    

Her first book, The Girl Pages, was published by Hyperion.