Jackson Pollock Paints Pammy T’s Daddy by Tammy Robacker

There is no plan just subject here I am the drip the smear the nanny that circles the room chasing after tiny Pammy T it is a canvas it is a kitchen I am a chicken I walk the perimeter so wide so white so wolfen with Mr T peckish at center table but I am a chicken little chick out in an open pen he spreads like a newspaper open as the mouth of a thick mug I fill the space steam can’t escape fixed there as coffee and cream drawn up to two lips wide as his thighs in a blue bathrobe sky open as Cody, Wyoming where Pollock grew up you never saw land expand like those miles of grain colored plains in the mountain west when you assess canvas that monstrous you can look into the light peep past the blinding vastness of a thing a burbling dark negative space is what breaks through the thread holes pricked in a seam to be a painting to be an elegy O elegies for nannies elegies for the good fathers somewhere elegies for pubic hair O elegies for those of us who grieve what can never be unseen

Tammy Robacker graduated from the Rainier Writing Workshop MFA program in Creative Writing, Poetry at Pacific Lutheran University (2016). She won the 2015 Keystone Chapbook Prize for her manuscript, “R” and her second poetry book, Villain Songs, is forthcoming from ELJ Publications. Tammy’s poetry has appeared in various publications across the web. Visit the poet: tammyrobacker.com