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poetry

ON COMPLETING THE SMALLEST PAINTING IN THE WESTERN HEMISPHERE
by
Laurel Bastian

My hand

is a giant

next to the fine brush tip, the thumb-

nail-sized canvas

on which


a girl

opens a door

in the middle of the sky, looks

down on a field:

poppies.


You can

only see her

with a magnifying glass and

strong light, her world

always


moving

away, blooming

inside itself, the common eye

passing over,

poorer.


Laurel Bastian has work in Margie, Cream City Review, Nimrod and other journals, was a finalist for the Ruth Lilly Fellowship, and is finishing an MFA at the University of Wisconsin—Madison. She teaches creative writing at a men's correctional facility. .

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