Instructions in Blue

   by Nadine Lockhart


I go to her for her instincts.  She shows me
her newest tattoo—a sunburst in dirty blue
above the breast—this, my reward after critiques,
suggested backgrounds.  She tells me she needs
a man, her husband—that’s not working—
makes it clear she wants an affair, not a divorce.

She talks about teaching art to the Navajo,
how she had a freedom on the reservation.
Some things are very strict, like the colors
she allows, only eight, nine if I count the red
cadmium we can borrow from her bin. The rest
she measures onto our trays, warm to cold.

You draw your paintings, she says, studying
the pansy-filled bowl I copy from the back
cover of Liberty with a small brush.  She creates
light with bright washes, foliage in three strokes.
Sessions later, she confesses, I can’t draw, hate it,
hands me my paints from the freezer.

Cerulean’s a world apart from ultramarine.
The former’s a robin’s egg, cartoon sky,
difficult to use:  the other—
part of the basic palette:  a dark night, the sea
when mixed with green.  Matisse’s cutout figures
dance on a field of it, under yellow stars.