Susan McLean
Cosmopolitan
Because the world is large, you want to go.
Your father flies to meetings overseas.
Your aunt has lived in Norway, seen Japan,
and teaches you some words of French. You know
foreign can mean better: look at cheese.
You mean to get to Paris if you can.
When you turn twelve, your party features food
from many countries, named and sourced on tags
you glued to toothpicks. Blissful, you exude
pride in such elegant sophistication.
If only you'd been able to find flags
to highlight further each exotic nation.
Your aunt lives near the Turkish Embassy
and the Islamic Center, which she toured
(she had to take her shoes off). At the zoo,
she captures scores of beasts in origami,
a fascinating art she teaches you.
She's polished, cultivated, and assured,
but seething. Though she’d finished her A.B.,
at work she's placed among the typists. Never
let them know you type, she warns. However,
your dad makes you take typing classes. He
believes girls ought to know a useful trade
in case they don't get married. You're dismayed.
You watch films by Cocteau, Resnais, Truffaut.
On high-school trips, your younger siblings fly
to France, see Paris, visit Chenonceau.
At twenty-six, when you reach France at last,
a strike shuts down the Louvre and Versailles,
leaving you limp as Dalí's clocks, aghast.
You feel completely flattened, but don't know
that two years later you'll return and see
the sights you're missing. Now, you may as well
see Notre-Dame, the Seine, and Sainte-Chappelle,
and strolling through the parks and squares is free.
The world's still large, and still you want to go.
Escape Artist
I am Houdini. Boxes can't contain me,
no matter how well sealed with chains and locks.
Watch as I demonstrate the paradox
that straitjackets and handcuffs can't restrain me.
Daily, I enter deathtraps to remind you
we're all locked in a cage without a key.
Why would you stake your brief life to be free
if you don't feel the cutting ropes that bind you?
Look at this sonnet. Do you think I'm trapped
in this cramped box of syllables and rhyme,
straining against the latches, starved for air?
I've honed my skill and wits, learned to adapt
to stricture, stress, the bounds of breath and time.
You see: the box is open. I'm not there.
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| Brittany Vogel is an award-winning, New Jersey-based painter known for her bold color and beautifully expressive line. Her Powerful Women series has struck a chord well beyond the gallery walls, earning inclusion in multiple exhibitions including a Monmouth Museum x Smithsonian Exhibition and coverage in numerous press outlets, including Yahoo! News and feature spreads in TapInto and 07030 Magazine.
Vogel's work lives in public spaces as much as private collections. She created a 12-foot interactive mural, Suffragists Marching, in the Columbus Circle subway station, and has delivered artist talks at the Bruce Museum and the Hoboken Historical Museum. Her achievements include the competitive Merit Scholarship from the Art Students League of New York and features in three consecutive Monmouth Museum Annual Juried Exhibitions. She has mounted solo shows of both her Powerful Women and Order vs. Chaos series in New York City and New Jersey.
Whether she's covering a subway wall or a canvas, Vogel's aim is the same: command attention from across the room, then reward a closer look with a rich, layered story worth lingering over.
Brittany continues to paint, exhibit, and expand the Powerful Women series from her studio in Hoboken, New Jersey, adding new women and new stories to the collection.
For additional information, please visit www.BrittanyVogelArt.com.
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