Derrick Austin

Drag Daughter’s Song

Will this face,
which isn’t my face,
ever bring me fame?

From my mother’s mug
I learned my own.
Praise her imagination.

God save the girls
without a good foundation.

---

The Art Restorer

What are these figures up to? Who knows.
It’s hard to read a weathered expression.
In an apron, I arrange my tools in rows:
cotton swabs to clean faded, celestial hose,
a scalpel for wax on a distant mountain.

What are these figures up to? Who knows
if angels can curse or grieve Golgotha’s woes.
Leading the eye, accessories to Magdalene
and Christ, they show us what to feel. Suppose
they look like us, their faces a lost reflection?

What are these figures up to? Who knows.
The panel cracked from heat. An X-ray shows
patterns in the wood I preserve or recondition.
Picture its candlelit past: a draft blows
against chafed pilgrims wrapped in sheepskin.

Recovering the shades and shadows
of different eras and other worlds, I imagine
I do good work here. At last, this corner glows.
Centuries of varnish dissolve. Sickly yellows
leave Mary’s face. Her eyes are wet and sanguine.

Derrick Austin is the author of Tenderness (BOA Editions, 2021), winner of the 2020 Isabella Gardner Poetry Award, and Trouble the Water (BOA Editions, 2016).