Juliana Leslie

The Life of Marginal Fauna

No more a starling  than a complex 
variable at odds with the limit and reach of her body.  
Not the inner majestic material medium nor  
the First International Polar Year.  
My  location at sea and my fundamental empirical 
measurement of the earth a skirt  of intellect in the 
almost blue darkness of Lorca.  
The speed of light is finite and cannot be  altered.  
It enters the painting and  remains there advancing a 
wave in multiple directions of loss.  
To surmise the anonymous woman’s untitled  
secret open an aerial view of winter inside her.  
She must remain the bright double, the  
striking southern light in a painter’s alphabet.  
The question is not will she dream but can  
she imagine a more beautiful bell or planet.   
She is adjusting her dress and spectacles.  
She is adjusting her painting entitled 
Interior Monologue Concerning the Use 
of a  Single Color.

Sandra Scolnik
Self-Portrait, Undeveloped, 2000
Oil, enamel, spray paint on panel
Collection of the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City, Missouri; Museum purchase made possible by a gift from Jo and Bob Lloyd, 2000.1