You may know that in addition to my poetry I also do art, posted on my blog Claudia McGill and Her Art World. For the next several months I will be posting here a combined art/poetry project, Large Artist Sketchbook 2020.
I fill up sketchbooks with all kinds of art. Some contain images only and some of them I use the images as inspiration for poetry. In these books the image is on one page of the spread and the poetry on the other. This book is set up in this manner.
I’ll show you the image and then add the poem that goes with it. See what you think.
In the Losses
In the turquoise shade of the alley
two houses face each other
across a crumbling strip of asphalt.
Resigned to the long falling-off
they no longer see each other’s
peeling paint
sagging balconies,
chimney bricks chipped and mortar missing.
It is quiet this afternoon.
Cracked concrete sidewalks
undulate themselves past the cars
sitting heavy in the driveway.
Metal clangs clatter out from the garage
in one burst
and then
Silence.
The houses regard each other
fixed expressions
conveying the same boredom as ever.
The turquoise shadows
begin to fade to purple.
4/23/20
Large Artist Sketchbook 2020 image 20
Claudia McGill Writes Poetry, Did You Know That? 
I like the sketch (love the colors) and the poem. It’s interesting to think of the houses regarding each other–that they are the true neighbors, rather than the people who live within.
It has always interested me how people have short lives, but the things we make often go on for a long time. Since I am interested in houses I think about it in that context a lot.
Yes, and some houses seem to hold lots of energy/emotion inside.
I’ve noticed this and I wonder why it is so.
I don’t know, but some houses just seem to have it.