Empty Mirror

a literary magazine

  • About
    • About Empty Mirror
    • Get in Touch
    • Support EM
    • Colophon
  • Submit
  • Contributors
  • Essays
  • On Literature
  • Poetry
  • Reviews
  • Art
  • Interviews
  • Beat
    • Beat Generation
    • Ted Joans Lives!
  • +
    • Fiction
    • Music & Film
    • News
    • On Writing
    • Book Collecting

Four Paintings and a Poem by Stephen Lee Naish

Stephen Lee Naish

mixed media art by Stephen Lee Naish

mixed media art by Stephen Lee Naish
mixed media art by Stephen Lee Naish
mixed media art by Stephen Lee Naish

Untitled

a Coke machine
a smile
a casual “hi”
a walk barefoot in cut grass
a door
a gas station
a pencil
a paperclip
a desire to be anything you want
a bed
a lamp

                          a bed sheet sent out of a top floor window floats like a ghost over a city

a laugh from another room
a reminder
an inconsequential reminder
a nervous twitch in the right eye
a sight unseen
a flock of gulls
a powerful sky
a brush
a tin, rusted and chipped
a game of dominos you lose you always do.
a tumor or maybe an abscess
a glass of water

                          a steak and kidney pie, half eaten, the kidney left, not consumed
                          a coffee cup, crushed cigarette butts in the flaky granules

a stone
a fight
a loss
a breath
a passing
a light, not daytime yet
a darkness, not nighttime yet
a nothingness
a sense of pride
a living
a light gone out
a sadness
a sadness of never knowing
a sadness of losing memory
all memories, forever
a sadness of never seeing
again
a sadness of never touching
again
a sadness of losing a breath
again

your breath and mine

                          and all I have left are rooms which you once occupied

Share on TwitterShare on Facebook

Stephen Lee Naish

Stephen Lee Naish is a writer on the subjects of film, politics, and popular culture. He is the author of four books, most notably, Create or Die: Essays on the Artistry of Dennis Hopper and Riffs and Meaning: Manic Street Preachers and Know Your Enemy. He lives in Ontario, Canada.

Author: Stephen Lee Naish Tags: mixed-media, painting Category: 20th Anniversary, Visual Art and Visual Poetry May 29, 2020

You might also like:

on painting on
On Painting On
Caving with Malcom (detail) - Rodica Miller
The Mists of Youth: Oil Paintings
Still Life Mashup (detail)
Mashups: Canvases from 2013-2017 by Gregg Simpson
(detail) Neco Beth painting
Motiv Eternal: Paintings by Neco Beth

Comments

  1. Joseph Lamm says

    May 29, 2020 at 7:17 am

    Hello!

    I’d like to inquire if the paintings shown here are available for purchase? They are wonderful.

    Reply
    • Stephen Lee Naish says

      May 30, 2020 at 3:14 am

      Hello Joe
      We could have a discussion about that.
      Drop me an email at steleenaish (@) gmail.com.
      Thanks for your interest.
      Steve.

      Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

I accept the Privacy Policy

 

DONATE TO BLACK LIVES MATTER

BLACK LIVES MATTER

The EM newsletter

Receive fresh poetry, reviews, essays, art, and literary news every Wednesday!


Empty Mirror

Established in 2000 and edited by Denise Enck, Empty Mirror is an online literary magazine that publishes new work each Friday.

Each week EM features several poems each by one or two poets; reviews; critical essays; visual art; and personal essays.

Subscribe Submissions Support

Recent features

  • My Father’s Map
  • On Waiting
  • Seeing Las Meninas in Madrid, 1994
  • Visual poems from 23 Bodhisattvas by Chris Stephenson
  • Historical Punctum: Reading Natasha Trethewey’s Bellocq’s Ophelia and Native Guard Through the Lens of Roland Barthes’s Camera Lucida
  • Panic In The Rear-View Mirror: Exploring The Work of Richard Siken and Ann Gale
  • “Art has side effects,” I said.

Books

Biblio
© 2000–2023 D. Enck / Empty Mirror.
Copyright of all content remains with its authors.
Privacy Policy · Privacy Tools · FTC disclosures