Things You Can Do

In a room
with no books,
no paintings
on the walls,

with a click
you can look
over the shoulder
of Marc Chagall.

With his brush,
you can glide,
fly a blue horse
through a mackerel sky,

dance over the yard
in the garb of a bride,
or carry her
supine over Paris.

You can float like petals
onto the kitchen table,
curl up under the damp
spring bouquet,

and dream it is you
who adds pale blue
to the wings
like Chagall,

who once glanced
past the shoulder
of a classmate
who could draw

and never knew
until that moment
it was even a thing
you could do.

---

Kelly Houle is a writer and visual artist whose poetry has been published in Crab Orchard Review, Press Pause, Radar Poetry, Red Rock Review, The Round, Sequestrum, and Written Here and There: Community of Writers Poetry Review 2020 Anthology. She was a semifinalist for the Emily Dickinson Award (2003) as well as the Red Rock Poetry Award (2004). She has an MFA in creative writing from Arizona State University, where she also received a Virginia G. Piper Summer Creative Writing Fellowship. Kelly has worked as an academic tutor for the past twenty years. She is also a painter. 

The Blue Angel, c. 1937-38 | Marc Chagall