JIM STONER ARTISTRY

Below is an excerpt of poems and artworks from my currently unpublished work, Iterations of the Boy.  This book is about the psychological and spiritual trauma of a young boy. I include selected paired works from that book. I juxtapose the written word and visual artwork to highlight the paradoxical relationships in my personal, material, social, and spiritual worlds.  In it, I weave artworks and poems into a coherent narrative. The paintings and poems give the heavy subject matter of abuse multi-dimensionality. This powerful synergy of word and visual image activates and affirms deep emotional connections on an interstitial level that might not otherwise be achieved. 

Note: Iterations of the Boy is autobiographical fiction.

“Put your hand on top of mine.

Swear, us together.

Swear…never, ever, ever – never to tell! Promise never to tell!”  

I promise, Peter.

“If you tell you will die a horrible, terrible death.

Satan will eat your soul.

Give me your index finger."

He pricked it with a needle.

He pricked his own. 

“When we mix our blood, we become blood brothers

bound to each other, keeping our secrets.”

His zipper slid down. 

“Rub it.”

I did but I did not want to.

“Little crybaby.”

The starlings swim against the wind.

All of them together, synchronous, apparent order

within disorder, seeming contradictions,

a mathematical problem solved by

an algorithm, followed by calculations,

the common divisor, an infinite sequence of terms,

neither adhering nor contained within brackets.

I thought that God gave us a name for these things,

but not this, not the myth of their wings,

held in the rhythms of a living brain split open,

bare and exposed to the air, pulsating, 

beating like a heart, even breathing,

held by the order of a line in a poem 

or song, one that is coddled by gravity,

which keeps each thing in its place:

the ebb and pull of the earth,

the incline and turn of the mind

and its tendency to hold an idea,

to listen to the footsteps

and the dust left as a reminder,

a prayer for the living and the dead.

The myth of song slows the heart,

setting like the hibernating sun, lifting dusk, 

the orange glow as it too falls,

leaving the night behind.

Water drops are beads of sweat 

all about Dad’s face. The beads

around his eyes look like tears, but 

that can’t be right because 

I never once saw my dad cry, shed 

tears, or any man cry for that matter.  

Are you crying, Dad? I wondered.  

Do boys reach a certain age 

and then the body changes and shuts off the water?  

Girls cry, are weak, and boys are strong,

though women say a good cry is good.  

Is that how we are different, besides

the other things?  Never have I seen a man 

cry: not Dad, not Grandfather, not Peter, not 

John Wayne, not Randy Savage, not Hulk

Holgan, and definitely not Clint Eastwood. 

Jesus wept once in the shortest 

verse in the Bible, though he didn’t 

even cry on the cross despite such pain.

I wonder if God cries in his disappointment?  

Mama cries all the time; Grandma cries,

too; Mrs. Reed cries; Renee cries; I used 

to cry—until I got a little hair under 

my arm pits and I stopped crying—

I cry no more, no crying.  I think God 

must have made us different for his 

own reasons that I do not understand.  

Peter says girls are crybabies, and boys 

are tough like leather, though the boys 

who do cry are little girls crying.  

When Dad beats me with the belt he gets 

mad when I cry and threatens to beat me 

with the buckle even worse; so I stop 

crying—I used to cry, but I have held 

it in so it has gotten easier not to cry

so now I have forgotten how to cry. 

Why do we cry anyway?

Why did God make us this way?  

Do we fill up with water like a trough 

then overflow, crying? Where does the 

water go for men? I got a lump in my throat

when I used to cry. I cried when I cut 

my leg and cried when I didn’t get my way; I

cried out of fear in the lonely night,

cried when Peter beat me up, I

cried when I was angry, but I don’t 

cry anymore.  I am not quite old enough 

to shut it off completely on my own. 

When I do cry, I go behind the barn so 

not even the sheep can see me cry.

I am told that I am too old 

to cry as there is no use for it.

There are different words for dirt:

one for the still dry earth,

the furrows neatly made by the plow in the field,

not yet wet and made mud.

and one for the dirt 

from hands soiled by

the dignity of hard work.

and one for the manure 

still stewing in the stable.

But nothing for straying, stained hands,

not yet washed 

of their iniquities.

and nothing to name

the uncertainty of a memory

stripped of flesh and bone,

like the hog hanging 

in the slaughterhouse

draining of blood.

and nothing for the hands

that dig deep inside, breaking

the bone, the marrow spilling 

out like a broken soul.

and nothing for his mean eyes

and steady grin that tears open

a soul so he can smell the ghost inside.

The sun crosses the fields,

breathing light within fire,

forcing my hurting eyes, sensitive 

to decaying stories, visions—

the bat within the rat hiding in the barn,

the crow within the dove atop the church steeple,

the tension and union.

My bowl overflows with dirt, 

bloodless meat, and dead perfume,

yet I am not so broken

that I am unable to see rainbows 

or halos or spider webs floating in the air

in the mist of a sun-filled rain, 

my cup filling up with flames,

folly, bright rage, and

light bouncing off my swollen eyes.

She lies with her head on the couch propping 

it up with a pillow, tossing her slender hair, splayed 

like nerves, a million points on her head over the arm.

I start to brush through the thicket with the grain—

the ends first, gentle like she taught me, carefully teasing 

them out so not to stir up her aching tangled inside. 

She cares for her hair and teaches me to care too. 

When we started, she aimlessly stared at the ceiling, 

perhaps studying the cracks until her eyelids softly folded.

Her eyes beneath her lids quiver like two bow strings. 

She breaths freely and is trance-like. 

I watch her move from this world to the other. 

Her shadow disappears, revealing the secret of light, 

a rusty pearl, and the songbird. I brush, noticing her 

narrow lips, the line of her nose and jawbone; her thinness, 

how her face comes together without even a flaw. 

She is not dirt, not stone, not rock bone, not ash, not dust, 

not grave, but a soft plum given of its time. 

The mild moon rises slowly out from inside her 

to rest on her forehead. The straightened wind wanders 

in through the open window whisking up her hair.

Her hunger for loving attention is disguised in there.

Published in The Headlight Review. Hybrid artwork/poem featured on homepage. Kennesaw State University. October 2022.

that runs akross the sky,

that I color real good,

rite nice betwene lines,

and make color full rain bows 

with Charly Hoarse at my side.

I wysh upon a star

that does not have its cloths on,

to have the strong blue 

jays wings with fyre 

that risez as it flyes.

I wish this all to keep

me synging till I dye. 

The Boy in the Window

The wind rises, lifting the whirling leaves 

and with them, the crow and starling near the barn;

the horse, though, sinks deeper into the mud,

soaking, a basin of carved bone, shivering as the rain falls 

from the graphite sky.

The boy watches from his window,

the raindrops form spider webs that entangle him, 

droplets as lenses and upside-down images

and concave shapes that 

distort the barn, trees, grass, and fence.

The rain cannot wash away the mud

or lift the horse from it.

The rain is thick and steady.

The sky makes the chaotic droplets darker

and more defined, his fingerprints

are evidence that he has spent much time here

indifferent, watching, fooled by his focus, glazing

like a camera, his inner eye,

the beautiful simplicity, the 

enduring moment, an admission of sorts 

of suffering and endurance, 

an awakening from the daydream,

hypnotized by the patter on the glass.

The worms crawl, the cold miseries, 

no comfort from a friend; 

This rain is not of a cloud but an anvil,

an unrelenting heaviness amplified by the rain.

Though the rain, there is no bursting of a desert flower.

The boy behind the window, his figure

barely visible, raises his whitewashed wings, 

though dark and heavy from the rain –

too much, the palpable sadness of things,

unable to take flight.

What I desire in a nightmare

is to escape, to break it, 

separate the parts, to

reduce it to fragments, to

shatter it like crystal, shards,

to breathe easy, to forget,

to clear away the darkness

under the dense trees,

to see the sun seep through 

the spaces to gather memories 

that I think will make me whole, 

to travel great distances,

to a destination that is my own.

What I desire in a nightmare 

is for the morning to break 

through the night, to break

the spell cooked by the cackling witch,

to step out of my bed,

to open the curtain 

to enter the healing light.

Published in Jesus the Imagination, A Journal of Spiritual Revolution. Angelica Press. Hybrid work. Volume.3. May 2019.

A shape that I am unable to recognize due 

to her aura of vulnerability,

her paradox of loving devotion and dispassionate love,

she draws open the curtains 

and the bones of her face emerge, her faint palpitations, 

– the smell of her cold heart –

deceit, her need for the lyric, the need for her soul’s fence mending.

She is generous in sharing the scraps of meat easily torn from her flesh.

I get out of my bed to stand next to her.

She stares at the image of herself reflected in the window.

My silent, damned soul, watches, still sealed 

under the covers, within the echoes, 

blotting out the power of penetration

and a genealogy of snagged and tarnished memories, 

unable to measure the depth of the sounding line:

how I feel next to her staring down at my frost-like foundered horse, 

still standing, anchored, aching, unmovable in the frozen mud. 

Published in The Headlight Review. Hybrid artwork/poem featured on homepage. Kennesaw State University. October 2022.

I took my black Crayola 

and made an outline of Jesus.

Grain silos stretched high, 

scratching a deep blue sky.

Charlie Horse was stuck in the mud. 

I then took the red one and drew my dad, 

I stuck a knife in his head.  

A red river flowed from it all the way to the end of the page.

Peter lay on the couch. Mama said he was a thief. 

The Lord’s cross was placed between them.

Peter was one of the thieves next to Jesus,

the one on the right hand, mocking Him. 

He did not keep his cup clean,

rather he was a grape gatherer who did not share his crop,

he stole the ox and sheep,

his hands were unclean.

Her message for salvation was the arm of the oak.

He wanted nothing to do with repentance or salvation

and instead chose death over life;

he rebuked her as the arm of the oak fell on his head.

She was giving a lesson.  

He laughed at her.  

She attacked him. 

They fell to the floor, entangled.

She swung hard and it came down on his head again.

He screamed bloody murder. 

He begged, along with me, for her to stop, 

but she kept going until Peter bled, 

drops of it fell on her white robe. 

Then Jesus said to her, 

“Put your sword back into its place.” 

But Mama sharpened her plowshare, 

her pickaxe, her mattock, and her sickle. 

But if the sun has risen, there is guilt for both. 

He would be sold like the sheep,

bloodshed follows bloodshed.

Let her swallow what is left of his soul.

He stole the water and the bread

but he has no intention to repent,

violating the law of love. 

He did not want God's mercy.

He cannot turn back the clock. 

She snared him in her trap, like a rat 

and plunged him into ruin.

For hatred is the source of evil, 

no righteousness, godliness, faith, and love.

For Mama, Peter was a labor of love

or hate, as paradoxical as they are.

For him though, he did not know 

where to place the comma and

could not recognize the end of a sentence.

He had entered the sheep pen 

not by the gate, but climbed

over the fence the easy way. 

She told him to repent.

He said, “Over my dead body!”

I stand at my window

watching the yellow flickering flames 

that climb their way out of the openings of the barn,

lift up the scarlet darkness,

like in a silent film.  

Flames pour out the barnyard door, 

thick, billowing smoke flows, escapes

from the silence, masking emptiness inside.

She offers a breath to fuel it, 

a releasing of sorts,

her flesh simmering like the hay and manure,

and bleeding like the barn boards.  

The crying train rocks the house

and bends into the flames like old pain.

Mama stands near the gate, in her white, blood-stained robe, 

holding a gasoline can, looking on,

another version of herself, copper dipped in vinegar,

though her face is drained of blood.

God’s fingers did not light this fire,

it was not His creation,

but He was implicit in the night,

an eternal sadness was inside there,

vanishing like thawing snow.

She looks golden against the flames,

her wounded skin, torn flesh, ashen bone,

a shape-shifter, her wings flap

though she does not take flight, 

too heavy from her sins and grief

that she could not gloss over,

but too haunted by the space she filled,

another version of herself, cold, rusted steel,

standing beneath a sky, a ceiling.  

I walk past my dad who is in the living room

sleeping in his chair oblivious,

though marked by sin and not caring.

I walk outside across the frozen mud

to stand next to her near the gate.  

The sky is brilliant, lit up by the embers 

creating its own magical constellations.  

Against the fire, Mama looks full of light, 

yet her eyes are vacant and mimic the fire,

mimicking the cries of her lost son and his ghost.  

A single tear slowly falls down her cheek

as a result of gravity.

In animal silence, the aching horse is still in the mud,

leaving no tracks of his own, but clearly

seeing the absurdity in the image of the flames.

In starlit silence, the crow and the dove, smoke and rain,

take flight, dark and fading in the coal-black distance,

flying to a tree to bleed, songless and dreamless, now unable

to mend their nests they had built in the barn.

Nothing falls off her tongue.

She bleeds through the inferno.

Everything vanishes, melting away with the night.

Mama reaches out her tremoring hand to hold mine,

her fingers like spines, the moon stroking her brittle bones,

her pulse faint against mine.

Her tight lips quiver and the muscles in her neck and face 

force her painful smile that I recognize as my own.

I woke in the middle of a rain storm

and a flash of lightning flickered

and the thunder rumbled through me.

After a long time, I got up and walked down

the hallway and opened the door to Peter’s room.

I lay in his bed where his warm body once slept, 

imagining it was him.

I shut my eyes, blindly staring into unseeable 

darkness so familiar to me.

I searched for him there.

Slowly, the void deepened, beyond

black, gradiating into a blinding bright white 

which became a soft and pleasing hue of blue,

a sudden and momentary flash of light

like the luster of a smooth, white pearl, 

and there before me was plush green

grass and a row of oak trees that reached 

the river’s edge.  

It was pleasantly warm there, a slight 

breeze blew a gift of transformation, 

from human to swan, from fish to flower, 

married to the heavens,

gravity momentarily holding them there.

They dug fetid mud with their skinless hands, 

dripping between their fingers.

From across the glass-like river 

there were many children playing 

along the bank in a clearing,

forming a ring around their warped ghosts,

stripped of flesh, bone, and

justice, the taste of strawberries

just picked from the field, 

the lost flavor of unpaid bills,

no quickening of healing

of their lost flesh and tangled hair,

no longer immersed in their rage,

but not yet pardoned for their deeds.

Near the largest and sturdiest oak

some of them were swimming.

There were no grown-ups there.

Waves of laughter, splashes, and joyful screams

mixed in with the slow movement 

of the river and the rustle of leaves.

I watched them from a distance

from behind the faraway oak, 

wishing to play with them.

It was a scene that was not mine,

and I sat down on the ground

amidst the fallen autumn leaves.

I watched and wept, waiting for an invitation

to join in with them; but none came, so I 

lay down between two exposed roots

of the wrinkled oak and watched their dirty faces

and the tiny opening in the passing clouds.

I later woke and they were next to me, 

their shape-shifting eyes 

and ashen skin, yarn unravelled,

standing together, holding hands, 

their spirits burning in the day,

kinship of the dead.

I had no sense of their coming.

I felt no fear, no shame.

Then from behind the ring of 

perpetual youth,

my brother Peter stepped through.

He held out his hand and I took his.

I stroked his bone gouged by meanness.

I knew you’d be here, I said.

He said, Mama and Dad was wrong about me.

We ain’t born bad. 

We ain’t bad. 

I ain’t bad. 

I was bad for good reasons.

They tied the rope and watched me die.

Peter was no longer a baroque pearl.

He let go of my hand and walked around me;

hovering in place like a humming bird.

I came to play with ya’.  

Do ya’ guys wanna play?

I looked at the other children,

and their faces fell to the ground.

Ya’ got to go back home, he told me.

I don’t want to go home.

Let me dwell in this place with the wrecks,

where the sun brightens the fields

and the birdsong sings where

day and night have no beginning or end.

Peter and the children turned to walk

the path leading down to the river.  

I tried to walk with them, too;

but as I stepped onto the path 

I had no sense of my going, my belonging, 

as the night fell and their souls swam up river,

leaving me to smell the fish,

taste salt, and blood all the way into the unending night 

where my prayers go unanswered.