Ambiguous Tour With Sequins by Laverne Zabielski

When I say, the title of my next  book will be “Everything I Need

to Know in Life I Can Learn In Art Class,” I am not kidding.

Marilyn said, Don’t waste paint. Don’t waste anything.

A make-do life becomes a make-art life as I paste sequins in my

altered artist journal and begin to define what I am thinking.

Do I define what I’m thinking before the fact or after the fact?

This begins my ambiguous tour through the maze of not

what is there to learn, but what I want to learn. Take what you can

and apply it to what you want. Joyce said, don’t let them lead you

astray. I can see that I will have to make the list of teachers in the

front of my book longer since my friend Joyce becomes my teacher

by suggesting the use of metal leaf on my sequins. Before making

art my life art, I would not have taken her suggestion seriously.

Now it’s yes, yes, yes, teach me, teach me, teach me. Arturo said,

bring what you are already doing to class. Jim said, keep it

personal. How can so many people say the same thing and it be

so difficult to understand? Do you really want to know why

I put sequins in my book? It is survival. It is tedious. I want it tedious.

What do you worry about, Mom? Johnny’s only 13. Of course

he has no idea. I am old. When I was a young mother, I didn’t worry.

Now, I know too much. Seen too much. Done too much.

I paste sequins in my  journal. Tedious. The mind cannot worry

when choosing a color combination for sequins. The mind cannot worry

on the ambiguous tour through art, ambiguous art, where excitement

and adventure live. Life is predictable. Art is ambiguous. We know

where life goes. All over the place. And sometimes the colors smear.

I slow down. I don’t turn the page so fast. I said, if you were to smoke

pot and I’m not saying it’s OK, but, if you were, I’d  like to think

you were responsible, like not smoking before school.


I have written this in so many forms until it was finally forgotten since it always felt unfinished, and I’m concerned I tried to cover too many events and form in the same poem. But I like it.”

Laverne Zabielski, a writer and artist, received her MFA in Writing at Spalding University in Louisville in 2004. Her poems have been published in The American Voice, The Thinker Review, The Sun and Southern Exposure. Her memoir, The Garden Girls Letters and Journal was published in 2006 by Wind Publications. she/her Kentucky/Shawnee Land/USA

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A Sense of Lost by Laverne Zabielski