September 18, 2007 by Melanie Alberts.

At eight I spent every free minute drawing. My head bent so close over the paper my hair became a brown curtain pulled over my drawings. Of girls, mostly. My older sister showed me how to draw a face, the teased up hairdo, the body and dress. I made them her way until I got it right. I became so well known at school for my drawings that a boy asked me to draw my first nude and he paid me a quarter for a full length view. In the bathroom at home I drew my best Girl. But my nude wasn’t like the ones in books my parents put on the highest shelves, those ladies with their small unsmiling heads and round behinds stirring from sleep. Mine resembled what little I knew of bodies, a flat paper doll with no underwear on. Her nipples were ice-cream cones, her mons a chubby letter u. I handed her over to the boy by the monkey bars. She was rolled up tightly like a spyglass in his hands. The boy used it to call over his friends and he unfurled her right there. They liked her okay. What I liked was the slyness, the simple pretense of art: this boy paid for pornography, not a nude. I got notoriety for drawing like an adult at school, not telling all and never feeling dirty.

a girl with scissors—
triangle, circle, square, cuts
paper hearts in two

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September 10, 2007 by Melanie Alberts.

dragonflies cruise
over newly cut grass—
summer’s end

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September 3, 2007 by Melanie Alberts.

September—
our kisses last longer
under the covers
outside, butterflies migrate
toward warm, longer days

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