Poem: ‘Hard of Hearing’
Douglas Oliver, 12 January 1995
When the painter died the people in her painting stiffened a little in their oils: my sister’s two friends from art school, dressing in her bedroom. An oval mirror caught in the arms of a pink rattan chair reflects Mona’s bed too high slanting down from an unstable wall in the uneasy Browning Avenue house. Her visitors peer intensely when I ask if they want breakfast, seeing my...