Art Therapy Poetry by Crystal Hurdle

Cause and Effect

Magda is hospitalized

her body colonized

her head on fire.

She flails.

Her busy hands claw empty air.

Sick unto death

she welcomes the expanse of antiseptic white sheets

like a shroud

blank as a canvas.

She has only to roll and then roll over

to bury herself in them.

Beth, fellow art therapist friend, brings Magda sketch pad and pastels

so that she can draw her way out of illness.

Magda’s face rips in two.

Her scream bubbles up from within.

Magda magma lava

No non no non noooo

What if doing the art caused her to become ill?

She grips her opposite fingers rather than paint brush or pencil,

no colour healing enough to sully the tabula rasa sheets

into which she cocoons herself.

She doesn’t know then it will take a full year to recover

much less who will emerge

or what.

Contours 

Contour drawing of my hand

Magda says,

Look at the paper not your hand

Magda contradicts,

No, look at your hand not the paper

Blind leading the blind

Negative or positive? Which is it?

What will go in the negative space?

Will I continue to fear it

until I embrace it?

Pull out the images

the reptilian fetal heads, the grasping fingers and tentacles

Transcribe them, name them

Don’t miscarry

Don’t disassociate

By drawing,

you can give them away

The silent scream

capillaries, veins

catch and release

both at once

the abducted children, alive, dead

like Schrödinger’s cat

Magda says,

When the paper’s wet, use the tip of the brush to indent

Magda says,

Think of trauma as a gift

Drawing: Mother

Despite the sleepless nights, counselling sessions, disquietude, terror,

three decades ago,

Magda knew her calling: ART THERAPIST

So sharp an epiphany,

it might have happened this morning:

Her six-year-old says, I miss my mother.

Magda says, Sweetie, I’m right here.

I miss my other mother.

I miss my sister, my room, my kitty.

The child draws as she remembers.

Her Crayola box has insufficient colours to depict

the bright doors of Ireland

where she’s never been.

Our entrance is yellow.

Blue fills this page,

not sky, not ocean, not horizon

a monolith.

It’s a car, that’s the bumper.

Then gouts of red.

On paper, as if to ward it off,

a flailing small fist

unfurls like a flag

out of Delacroix.