Discovering a New Painter by Michael Lasater

His work is what a shout might look like, 
        	shattered
into a thousand syllables. 
 
He is intense, our artist –
everything is urgent. 
 
Brush strokes explode in bold italics –
        	colors rush downstage,
boisterous characters
                    	piling up
                                	at the proscenium’s edge.
 
You can’t catch your breath.
 
Walk away. 
 
        	Anywhere in the room
he follows, taps you on the shoulder –
still something on his mind – still
        	                 	   something to say.

Hutchinson native Michael Lasater is Professor of New Media at Indiana University South Bend.  He has published in Kansas Time + Place, Heartland!, Cathexis Northwest Press, and The Heartland Review, where he is the winner of the 2019 Joy Bale Boone Poetry Prize.  See his work in art at www.michaellasater.net.

Guest Editor Katelyn Roth graduated from Pittsburg State University with her Master’s in poetry. Her work has previously appeared online at Silver Birch Press and at Heartland: Poems of Love, Resistance, and Solidarity. Currently, she lives, works, and writes in Kansas City.

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