The Indicator x The Student: “Slow Death of the Generic Tree Drawing”

 After Wong Shih Yaw and Safia Elhilo

If it’s okay,   I would like to start with the tree,
 tenderlined and      vanishing.

Focus your eyes on the leaves
 which are not     leaves   as much as
  they are   bushels        which are not   bushels
 as much as they are   clots    of cotton fiber
  melting into one   another.

You cannot find a single leaf
   but perhaps a brushstroke,     echoing.

 As if a waterfall
could flow in     reverse
the liquid strokes        seem
  to stream     into bark,
 forms linearize,      grooves begin
  to bump and edge     together,
 they follow the flow        of gravity,
    all the way down into

            nothing.

               A toothed edge grasps     at pale sky.  Soaks in
     pale silence     as the tree first fails
      to resume. Instead, the tree   fades,
      is fading as your eye        trails the page.

     Underneath,             a chopped tree,
         stump smooth, top curving
      a perfect oval,     a closed mouth.

      Perhaps  it is simply the same tree
        at another  point in time,    somehow occupying
    the same plane,    or perhaps they are
     two separate trees       on two separate planes
      indistinguishable in their sea      of gray.

 Even the clouds     are ash
 not white,   as they tell you    in school,
  as they weave the myth     of purity,
 as they guide your hands    to the pack of crayons
  and the roughness of construction    paper.

   Reach back

        [When did you learn to draw a tree?]

      [Did always you start       with the trunk?
         Was it always      brown?]

    [Did the leaves ever clot      like cotton,
       or clouds that got    stuck on their way
   through the sky?]  Perhaps     the tree
    has only ever known  its reality      folded flat.

           Perhaps,      this time,  the tree is simply
          forgetting itself   for a moment,
             and perhaps     we should let it.