hello tourist | Teen Ink

hello tourist MAG

July 25, 2009
By Holly McDede BRONZE, South Plainfield, New Jersey
Holly McDede BRONZE, South Plainfield, New Jersey
2 articles 0 photos 0 comments

just wait outside
one century, please
while i take off
my french impression
of a personality
and wipe off the
cynical poet's heartbeats
from my dress

the failed artist
turned abstract dentist
will be in soon
to remove your front teeth
with his gift-shop eraser
and to brush away your cavities
with his hands-free paintbrush

and don't forget
you have an interview
at two o'clock a.m
with the literary magazine
obituary reporters
who want to know why
the woman with a parasol
jumped off the brooklyn bridge
and what monet had to say
when she did

i was there when it happened:
one of the security guards
tried to transform the white space
underneath her dress
to real life emptiness
by holding a pair of lungs
his five-year-old son
had drawn for him
up to her mouth

no matter how many
times she connected the dots
into his chest no matter
how many times
she stenciled screaming
speech bubbles into his head
with her fingernails
and yelled to the tourists
that the oxygen was causing
her artistic temperature
to plummet down

no one did anything

except critique her breath patterns
as exquisite examples
of the early days of
eighteenth-century finger paint

soon his flesh blended
with her oil paint
his mother's eyes
her colorless fatherless pupils
conducted electricity
and for a while there
i wondered
whose body was the
metropolitan art museum
and who was going to be
the subjective realism
in this masterpiece

and when he let go
so did she

for weeks i heard him
talk about how close
he came to death
in the employee lunch room
and the dancers at the bar
the “Sunset at Ivry” the bathers
and i whispered quietly about
how close our friend
had come
to life



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This article has 9 comments.


on Jun. 15 2010 at 12:19 am
thelastclarissa GOLD, Worcester, Massachusetts
16 articles 0 photos 8 comments

Favorite Quote:
"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I intended to be. "

simply wonderful.

on Feb. 11 2010 at 2:02 pm
sunnyhunny PLATINUM, Litchfield, New Hampshire
22 articles 3 photos 329 comments

Favorite Quote:
&quot;An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.&quot;<br /> -Ghandi

This is incredible.

on Feb. 10 2010 at 5:30 pm
ShernayB. DIAMOND, Southfield, Michigan
62 articles 1 photo 881 comments

Favorite Quote:
&quot;Some things will never change&quot;---Tupac

Wow!

This is wicked twisted.

One character is close to dying

and the other was so close to being created.

I love it.

You are so talented.

Keep writing.

on Feb. 10 2010 at 10:30 am
blankpages12 BRONZE, Redding, Colorado
4 articles 0 photos 16 comments

Favorite Quote:
&quot;Sometimes you put up walls not to keep people out but to see who cares enough to break them down.&quot;

this is woah...great. i agree ending perfect way to end it. i think i shall keep up on your work

on Feb. 8 2010 at 8:23 pm
StandardToaster PLATINUM, Pasadena, California
20 articles 0 photos 209 comments

Favorite Quote:
I don&#039;t suffer from insanity; I enjoy ever minute of it.&quot;

cool poem. i agree with chelsea the last line is killer. check out my work?

on Feb. 5 2010 at 5:29 pm
This is so creative and even though it's a terrible end (of the girl not the poem... the end of the poem is absolutely great) it's a playful sort of feeling throughout. This is a very, very well written poem. It's great.

on Feb. 3 2010 at 10:24 pm
Chelsea3883 SILVER, Colorado Springs, Colorado
5 articles 7 photos 7 comments
wow. loved that last line :)

on Feb. 1 2010 at 7:40 pm
dancewritedream SILVER, S. Dartmouth, Massachusetts
5 articles 0 photos 22 comments

Favorite Quote:
&quot;Masquerading as a normal person day after day is exhausting.&quot;

intriguing..... and no I'm not being sarcastic with my rather einsteinish word. It's amazing and really truely makes you think. I'm still not sure I truely get it even though I keep coming close to thinking I do. Wicked deep. All in all love it!

on Feb. 1 2010 at 2:59 pm
pampalooga PLATINUM, Natick, Massachusetts
30 articles 0 photos 20 comments

Favorite Quote:
&quot;We all can&#039;t be heroes. Somebody has to sit on the sides and clap as they go by.&quot; &quot;In the end, they&#039;re just more words.&quot;

different, but wonderful. deep too. good job :)