Elpida’s Art Class

after Yusef Komunyakaa’s “Toys in a Field”

Using borrowed
colored pencils
she draws her mother
with orange and gold
her hair to her waist
hands on
hour glass hips
hearts flying across
the page
with the letters
L and O running
right to left
V and E to follow
bobbing below the Arabic script
her mother pins her drawing
on the cubicle wall
as her older sister
stacks cards
the joker on top
gazing into
the blind sky