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

Red Danielson's painting, "Nightmare of a Square."

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

Red Danielson's painting, "Self-portrait."

Self-portrait

Red Danielson
Self-portrait, 2023
acrylic and pigments from pulverized stone in pouring medium on canvas
18x24in.
River Styx Magazine
© Red Danielson

Red Danielson's painting, "Self-portrait in leftover paint."

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.