Marjorie Moorhead
Remembering Jorge
—For Jorge Soto Sanchez
Constant motion. Dot-dot-dot;
cross-hatch cross-hatch cross-hatch;
the scritch-scratch of pen on page.
You filled drawing books this way.
White pages turned herringbone and houndstooth
with shading and shaping.
Bodies; faces; places.
Hearts; phalluses; breasts.
Round bellies and buttocks;
cheekbones; third eyes.
Pain and love and nature and cityscape.
Moon; stars. Scars of childhood; loves of manhood.
You told your story on page after page,
stretched canvas and cardboard.
Your heart poured through your pen;
stroked canvases thick with gesso.
It bled and bled a crimson love
until it burst its seams and stopped.
NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: Marjorie Moorhead met the artist Jorge Soto Sanchez in NYC in the mid 1980s. They lived together in VT, where Jorge died from AIDS, and Marjorie lived on without him. It was not difficult to write a remembrance. Jorge’s art can be seen online, if you google him.
Marjorie Moorhead is the author of the chapbook, Survival, Trees, Tides, Song (Finishing Line Press, 2019) Her poems have appeared in a number of journals and anthologies. She writes from the NH/VT border.
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Here is today’s prompt
(optional as always)
Today’s poem uses a lot of alliteration, repetition, and rhyme, especially in pairs of words (scritch-scratch; pen on page; herringbone and houndstooth; shading and shaping; faces/places; hearts/breasts; bellies and buttocks; scars of/loves of; childhood/manhood; page after page; canvas and cardboard; poured through your pen; bled and bled; seams and stopped). Write a poem using alliteration, repetition, and rhyme, about any HIV/AIDS-related topic.