Editor’s note: The works of this artist and writer pair are from our Art of Words exhibit, which is on view in the gallery of Follow Your Art Community Studios through October 2024. For this collaborative exhibit, FYACS writers and artists exchanged words and art, prompting each other to respond with something new.
“1970”
Prompt
by Sarah Beasley Monzón
The boy next door, who is older than I am but lets me tackle him and steal the ball when we play football, suggests we play “Dog Catcher.” We lead our compliant but bewildered dogs by the collars into the chain-link kennel in the back yard and bolt the gate. Sorry, our English Setter, looks sideways out her one black eye with the black spots dripping down her white face like tears but waits, panting, for me to let her out each time. Daddy swoops out of the house and grabs me by the hood of my red sweatshirt and drags me to my room.
“See how you like it!” he slams the door and locks it, or maybe just tells me it’s locked. When I discover that the bodies of my little Fisher-Price people, in those days made of aniline-dyed wood, leave wonderfully angry colored scribbles the length of my arm on the white of my bedroom wall, I am served dinner, late, in my room like Max in Where the Wild Things Are. I wake up in my clothes, wipe the crust of tears from my eyes. Sorry is waiting outside my open door.
Response
by Kerry Pegoraro
“I Am Not a Vessel”
Prompt
by Kerry Pegoraro
Response
by Sarah Beasley Monzón
They stand arguing in the shadow of a dying spruce, whose bumper crop of cones litter the ground like a death prophecy, as though its shallow roots can smell doom.
“I am not a vessel,” says she.
“Oh, but you are,” says he, rheumy-eyed and straggle-bearded. “Who else to carry the fruit of us all into the future?”
“Nah, dude,” says she. “There’s at least one too many of you on this planet already.”
“Just don’t screw up the timing,” he sing-songs. “Spend too long in school and you’ll miss the bus.”
Suddenly, a phalanx of college girls in matching sorority sweatshirts marches past them, blue denim upholstering their nubile hips and thighs. Giggling, flashing golden earrings and swaths of ironed hair, they pass under the eyes and aegis of Sigma Epsilon Chi.
“I share a connection with the creator through my uterus. We alone decide when acts of violence or love upon me merit the creation of another life under my supervision…”
“Here’s how it goes,” he interrupts. “Kiss, ring, dress, THEN diapers, in that order. No skipping around. All work and no play makes Jill an in vitro candidate. And an outlaw. And not for nothing, but hurry up, before your hourglass figure runs out!”
The sisters survey the pulsating mob as they pull fortitude from flimsy plastic cups of keg beer, at once foamy and flat. Their eyes shine like the place settings they will choose for their wedding registries in five years.
He needles, “Your little plans are hors d’oeuvres and dessert, chickadee. Kick those desires under the table before someone sees them, please. Let Daddy carve the roast.”
“I’m so sorry,” she breathes to restrain her fist, “It must be hard knowing that your genetic line took a wrong turn in the underbrush somewhere. You can try to yank back my voice, my vote, my very womanhood, but I am the kingmaker.”
Over the heads of the drinking sisters hangs a smoky old print of Magritte’s famous pipe, inscribed, “Ceci n’est pas une pipe.” “I,” she stomps, “am not a vessel.”
Sarah Beasley Monzón is writer-in-residence member of The Writers Studio at FYACS and is finally getting serious (or, perhaps, less serious) about writing after spending twenty-five years as a home improvement TV producer and director (Bob Vila’s Home Again, The Victory Garden, This New House, This Old House), four very expensive years as a real estate agent during the worst market in recent memory, and a few more years yukking it up managing the Trader Joe’s in Saugus. The wealth of jaw-dropping human antics she’s witnessed during her careers finally having reached critical mass, she’s now ready to write some of it down. She’s written some flash non-fiction and is currently working on a memoir-novel-epistolary thingie. Sarah has a BA in Spanish from Dartmouth College and lives in Melrose with her musician husband, their three (mostly) grown boys, and a very chill bearded dragon known as The Dude.
Kerry Pegoraro got her first taste of fine art back in 2005, while working toward a graphic design certificate at Mass Art in Boston. Today, she is a mixed media artist and an artist-in-residence at FYACS currently focused on printmaking, cut paper, and painting. See Kerry’s blog post about her white line printmaking technique.
Read more stories on Palette.