The Paint Factory Years

Julia Klatt Singer’s The Paint Factory Years 2.25″ x 193″ First edition of 100 “The Paint Factory Years” We mapped out our world in the empty lot, scratched our love into the pebbled dirt. When the rain came let it river, let it glisten on our skin. We measured the hours in the drifting of clouds, in the three-note song of a bird. Seven ways I said I loved you. Seven more I kept to myself. Not the blue, but the longing begins Singer’s collection—this phrase later finds its foothold in the poem “Berlin Blue.” All the same, not the paint, but the skin. Running along the Miami River in southern Ohio, I read in bold pink, graffitied letters PAIN IS PAINT. I built my endurance. We build our endurance with art, but art is not only a demonstration of our sufferings or pleasures. Across these years, smattered like dried paint, we outlast suffering and carry on with “the same ache in me that you have in you.“ Julia Klatt Singer is the poet in residence at Grace Nursery School. Co-author of Twelve Branches: Stories from St. Paul, and author of five books of poetry. Her book, Elemental, has audio poems at OpenKim, as the element Sp. She’s co-written numerous songs with composers Craig Carnahan, Jocelyn Hagen, & Tim Takach. Ms. Singer is a long-haired, sweater-wearing poet, painter, and thief.