We had an art exhibit last week
in the basement of the courthouse,
to benefit the library.
Price of admission was one book
or ten cents.
I paid ten cents the first time,
but they let me in the second and third times for free.
That was awful kind,
since I didn’t have another dime
and I couldn’t bring myself to
hand over Ma’s book of poetry
from the shelf over the piano.
It was really something to see the oil paintings,
the watercolors,
the pastels and charcoals.
There were pictures of the Panhandle in the old days
with the grass blowing and wolves,
there was a painting of a woman getting dressed
in a room of curtains,
and a drawing of a railroad station
with a garden out the front,
and a sketch of a little girl holding an enormous cat
in her lap.
the paintings
stored away in spare rooms
or locked up
where no one can see them.
I feel such a hunger
to see such things.
And such an anger
because I can’t.
December 1934