I was asked to participate in the ‘Black Mirror’ literary/art book coming out in Australia next year. One of the book’s main thrusts is the melding of art and story. Strangely enough, my friend, writer Dave Justus proposed the same idea to me a few months earlier- he’d write a short, evocative passage, and I would create an image based on that writing. So when ‘Black Mirror’ came calling, I saw it as an opportunity to act on it. I liked the idea, as it would push me out of my comfort zone, and force a collaboration of two different disciplines, art and writing. Dave’s poem follows-
Resister
This: the sister’s blistered skin;
A tryst the sister festered in
With some persistent jester, lest her pestering refrain
Remain restrained; regained composure
Shows her mincing sense of closure,
And heaven only knows her rose by any other name.
Kiss the sister’s withered skin,
The scissors in the severed kin;
She’ll never win the hand that she had planned. Derailed demand
Assailed her and impaled her wrists;
The sister paled; the jester missed
When he regaled her; failing this, he sank unthanked into the sand.
Risk the sister’s dreaming wrath,
Conflicted path in steaming bath:
The water ought not be so red; so said those feigning care.
It’s raining where she’s getting loose;
It’s fitting: such a pretty noose;
She’s hung, among her unsung victims, done with gaining air.
Sister, since her other name
Her brother claimed; another game
Has ended. She’s rescinded any offer ever made
And laid to rest her best defenses;
Maiden test of disused senses…
Missed by inches; dead, declining, sliding off her; never laid.
-Dave Justus
Pictured above is the art inspired by the poem, a 16×26 5 color silkscreen, signed and numbered in an edition of 100, available for purchase HERE.
-Tim Doyle
