JULIE KIZERSHOT

Portrait #1: Mixed Media with Parts of Speech on White Paper

Saffron held the egg in one hand and with a flick of her wrist deftly tapped it on the glass. Neat as a teacup it broke into two jagged crowns. The egg's interior slid into the bowl and landed with an almost inaudible plop on the small pile of flour. Puffs of white blinked up like dandelion seeds. The mixer's twin blades beat the buttercup smooth while grass grew befuddled with spring rain. Soon daffodils popped out all over the plot. The perfume of ripe lemons made tender the cowardly air. Somewhere on the visible spectrum betwixt orange grove and evergreen, a mulatto child wandered into the garden next door. It was inscrutably blond as a trumpet of honeysuckle. She knew not if it was boy or girl, but it was frolicsome. Perhaps it was hungry. Saffron whipped the batter with a forked tongue and muttered under her breath. She must be cautious, daffodil she must watch carefully before she crossed
to the next line. A wasp bumbled lazily irate against the window pane. She knew there was no such thing as a pure ray of light. No such thing as a daffodil. Any connotation might insert itself. Even when the organ of the eye was restored to perfection by surgery a forty year old blind man needed to learn to see. He who had worked with tools all his life when they lay before him had no idea what they were. He picked up a lathe and rolled it through his hands. "Now I can see it!" He yellowed. Two teaspoons of vanilla, a canary incantation, a daffodil again and a jar of mustard. In autumn the aspens shimmer. If it was a shape it would have to be round, she reflected. So pompous and self absorbed, but friendly enough. She glanced at the child, her eyes citrine and narrow, lined with black. Lightly, she tossed the shell away. All this happened in the infinite distance between the dandelion leaves and its dander. All in all, it was a beautiful day and the sun shone bright and globular in the cornflower sky.


Julie Kizershot lives in Boulder Colorado with Jazz and Cello, two black cats spared from the fires of Medieval witch hunts and on perhaps their seventh lives. She does graduate work at the University of Colorado and teaches modern literature there. She coordinated the Summer Writing Program at Naropa for many years. She has been published in Bird Dog, Paterson Literary Review, Sonora Review, Shampoo and in other locations online and in print.