Listen to this article. [4:41]
You’ll be confronted by a pile of domestic tools that are more familiar than you want them to be. They will be sprawled across a platform in the middle of the room, as though someone has taken a drawer from your suburban kitchen and upended it in this midtown classroom. You will have to choose something to draw from this hodgepodge mess of domesticity. Spatula, hand mixer, cheese grater, can opener, a whisk, spoons and forks, and a lemon juicer.
If you draw what you think, it might be a rendering of a discontent so intense you can feel it in your throat, a thick lump. You will wonder how you might draw the dull throb of purposelessness. How would you draw pain? If only strokes of vine charcoal could render longing. Try to stay focused on something concrete. Choose the whisk.
The only sound in the room will be the brushing of hands against newsprint and the slight footsteps of the instructor as she paces the room, looking over your heads at your work and then returning to her post beside the platform. Never mind that you want to make friends, hear your voice, connect. There will be no talking in this room, unless the instructor wants to make an announcement; when she does, she’ll call you all people. People, I don’t want any cell phones in here.
Try not to be nervous. Don’t worry about the sniffling, sneezing, acne-ridden young person, a boy younger than your sons, who criticized your drawing of a banana the previous week. You will have chosen the banana over the orange (too difficult to draw the bumpy surface) or the apple (who can manage the shading of an apple’s dimple in a beginner’s class?). Never mind that he said your drawing had too much negative space. Tell yourself it was a fine rendering. What could anyone so young know about negative space?
If you happen to be at the old end of middle-age and rummaging around to find your place in the vast hole that opens when your kids grow old enough to pull away, if caretaking has become so hard and exhausting and relentless that the final years with kids home has felt like a last lap, this drawing class might not be a good fit. If you’re gasping for your freedom, but you’re lost and can’t find your way back home to yourself, you might have to try other things. There are too many rules here. Surely there are other things to try: pottery, a book club, or a food pantry.
You will look at, and admire your whisk, your beautiful whisk. It will be perfect. The instructor will come and stand over you, pointing to the pile of utensils, then to your smudged, wrinkled, eraser-worn newsprint and say, “That’s not what you see.” She will motion for you to get up. She will take your seat and work with an eraser, charcoal, and fast hands while you stand over her, feeling awkward and dismissed. She will erase most of your whisk and complete her own version in less than five minutes. You might feel yourself drowning, drowning, drowning. Next week will be houseplants. You will know it’s time to quit. But what will be next?
Barnacles sparkle, puffins glint, human practices result in fish-strewn beaches. Like blue-green algae on lakes and ponds, red tide is a naturally occurring phenomenon. Nourished by human waste and warming waters, cyanobacteria multiply in harmful algal blooms (HABs) that release neurotoxins. In a whirl of games, addictions, concussions,swimming bans, Red Tide at Sandy Bend posits a world of creaturely interdependence visceral and intimate.
“Gilliland is a poet of witness and spirituality, grappling with climate devastation while also interrogating world policies and politics.” — Denise Duhamel, Best American Poetry blog
“She brings to her work the rich flavors of the natural world, yet her destination is clearly news of the inner self, its perceptions, its relationships with others. She is not afraid of delight, neither does she shirk the hard tasks of anger, pain, and deep caring.” — Mary Oliver
Featured chapbook poem in December 2025 Philly Poetry Chapbook Review.
Order from The Bodily Press or get a signed copy direct from author.
Find out more at https://marygilliland.com
Laura Carraro’s work appears in Sonora Review, Hippocampus Magazine, The Manifest Station, Dorothy Parker’s Ashes, and Brevity Blog as well as other publications. She holds an MFA in Creative Nonfiction from Sarah Lawrence College. Her memoir, Proof of Love, is out in the world seeking representation. She lives in New York with her husband and their fox terrier. You can connect with her at 
E.E. King is an award-winning painter, performer, writer, and naturalist. She’ll do anything that won’t pay the bills, especially if it involves animals. Ray Bradbury called her stories, “marvelously inventive, wildly funny, and deeply thought-provoking.” She’s been published in over 100 magazines and anthologies. She’s shown paintings at LACMA and painted murals internationally.