POETRY & VISUAL MEDIA
Red Danielson, Wisteria
February 27, 2025
A scar droops like wisteria over my hand where your pit bull ripped
down beneath the good flesh before I killed it in the bare lawn by
the motorless fridge & your four-year-old’s once beautiful face like a
whole bouquet of wisteria, where the dog would not let go though she screamed,
screamed like a light seen suddenly in a storm, where no light should rightly
be, screamed even after I pulled the dog from her; screamed with the
shattering clarity of a crushed throat, seemed to scream the word itself:
wisteria, wisteria, but all the same, you broke the bottle over my head, Eudell,
& touching the lifeless shoulder of your dog, sobbed then: my sweet, my
sweet, & the festivities expired, but still, something happened: it was
silence that draped over every onlooker as your little girl screamed those
petaled horrors, everyone watching with nothing to say, because what
do you say at the sight of such beauty as wisteria, wisteria: the vine of
shattered glass only wanting to fall from the thing that holds it so.
PSYCHICS
Red Danielson
PSYCHICS, 2023
acrylic and pigments from pulverized stone in pouring medium on canvas
24x36in.
River Styx Magazine
© Red Danielson
Nightmare of a Square
Red Danielson
Nightmare of a Square, 2023
acrylic and pigments from pulverized stone in pouring medium on canvas
24x30in.
River Styx Magazine
© Red Danielson
Self-portrait
Red Danielson
Self-portrait, 2023
acrylic and pigments from pulverized stone in pouring medium on canvas
18x24in.
River Styx Magazine
© Red Danielson
Self-portrait in leftover paint
Red Danielson
Self-portrait in leftover paint, 2023
acrylic and pigments from pulverized stone in pouring medium on canvas
18x24in.
River Styx Magazine
© Red Danielson
Red Danielson lives in the Mississippi River Valley of Iowa. He is a self-taught painter and a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. His work has appeared in The First Person, Haiku Journal, Haiku Presence, The Iowa Review, Little Village Magazine, and Three Lines Poetry, among others.