Tondo: Closing the Circle
After Sam Gilliam’s Something is Going On!—2021
In a muddle of abstraction
a face emerges—
owl, cat, human—
no certainty.
Should I turn the canvas,
straighten its gaze
or acquiesce,
tell it slant?
I can’t unsee the face.
Every time I view
the wooden disc,
color gathering,
my eyes move
paint fleck to paint fleck.
It’s as if color
is in constant change
textures crying out
their struggles, puddling,
though pigments are fixed
within and around a thick
bezeled circumference
framing colors with colors—
sanguine splatter,
comic book KAPOW—
our brutality,
as a gunshot wound
expels our blood.
Each drop
drains a life,
a body with a face,
human blood pooling,
the stain of lost lives
multiplied by numbers
of the slaughtered
escalating year by year.
Is this tondo Sam Gilliam’s
response to Marvin Gaye?
.What’s going on?
Something is going on,
on and on.
Voices
Sometimes she said
she needed to get rid of the voices
the voices
speaking aloud within her
the voices
keeping her up at night
the voices
waking her in the morning
the voices
distracting her in class
the voices
clashing in arguments
the voices
forming interpretations
sometimes devoid of facts.
Sometimes
she tried to quell the voices
self-medication
claiming to get in touch with
a truer self
but the voices returned.
Sometimes
she wrestled them into
her journal
an act of taking control
Over time
she embraced them
realizing
they belonged to her
discovering
she could channel
the voices
accept them all
as her own
filling pages with words
sketchbooks
and canvases with color
“live painting”
before crowds at raves.
Voices
music, strobe lights
streamed
through her body
her head
her arms and fingers
creating
wonder on canvas
voices
jumbled coming together
giving rise
to a calming within
birthing
fluorescent floral bursts
angular
hard-edged designs
blacklit
inspiration propelling her
forward
her voice saving her
sometimes.
Cathy Hailey is a poet and educator, who recently taught in Johns Hopkins University’s online MA in Teaching Writing Program and previously taught English and Creative Writing and sponsored the Eddas Literary/Art Magazine in Prince William County, VA. She served as Northern Region Vice President of The Poetry Society of Virginia (PSV) from 2020 to 2025, co-hosts Virginia Voices, and organizes In the Company of Laureates, a biennial gathering of poets laureate. She administers the Student Contest and Young Poets in the Community Program for PSV and the Jacklyn Potter Young Writers Competition for The Words Works. She will serve on the Alexandria, VA, Literary Task Force for the next two years. Cathy holds degrees from Duke University (A.B.) and George Mason University (M.A. English/Writing & Editing). She has been featured on Great Goodness, The Poet and the Poem, Sojourn with Words, and On the Margin. She has collaborated with visual artists on ekphrastic poetry projects. Her chapbook, I’d Rather Be a Hyacinth, was published by Finishing Line Press. Recent publications include FotoSpecchio, Little Free/Painted Pebble Lit Mag, First Frost, Making the Unseen Seen anthology, and The Avocet, a Journal of Nature Poetry. Visit cathyhailey.com.
Featured image “India – Painting a staircase” Photographed and uploaded by Jorge Royan to be licensed via creative commons 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons.
