you can't spell COURAGE without RAGE

In 06, I was working for Elmer Morris and the calendar on my desk had been purchased from the Mouth and Foot Painting Artists of America. The image for the month of May, pictured below, socked me right in the guts. Another painting referenced in the poem is "Peaceful Harbor" by Jean Michalski but I was unable to Googlemance it out just now. The artist who created the painting below is a Portugese lady named Daniela Cristina Caburro; you can go check out her gallery at her website.

She makes a living as a painter without the use of her arms. This lady is a ROCKSTAR. I'm so glad I found this poem again. It's not quite a sonnet: it doesn't follow the sonnet rules perfectly. But you know what? Things don't need to be perfect. Just beautiful.

Girl Gathering Flowers by Daniela Cristina Caburro

Works painted with the mouth, slow careful strokes
show beauty, rich in detail; emphasize
though limbs hang limp from spinal cords that broke,
more than mere puppets watch from our keen eyes.
Each petal's sharp, like flowers etched in metal.
Boats, stone-fast, stand in harbors; roofs slide off
into the sky. What's solid melts, unsettled.
What floats grows petrified, no longer soft.
One little girl stands in a field of blooms,
her legs obscured by solid greenery,
her hat askew, white as a skull entombed,
her gaze rapt at what only she can see.
I see a woman twisting flowers, beneath
which blur long-lost arms, painted through clenched teeth.