by Natasha O’Hara

I find my brushes by feeling
for teeth prints
I grab handfuls
of acrylics not what I want
what I can currently afford

squeezing the puny white tubes
across the palette
I had this idea to create
a fresh “birth of Venus”

I wanted to drink the paint water
I wonder if that’s how Vincent felt

Once while viewing “The Poet’s Garden”
in Chicago a Karen said to her group

It’s beautiful work, but I don’t think I’d want to be in the same room as him.

I wondered how she felt
being in the same room as me

Natasha O’Hara is a Theatre major and Creative Writing minor at Indiana University South Bend. She serves as the Managing Editor of The Deadline, IUSB’s English blog. She is the 2025 winner of IUSB’s undergraduate Nonfiction Student Writing Award, and her poetry has been most recently published in Ink Nest Poetry and Reverie Magazine. O’Hara lives in Northern Indiana with her wife and their three children.