Surface Pictures

Aric Bowie
why does it hurt to look at?
Pencil, ink, food color, and onlay collage on paper
11″x 28″
October 2025

 

I look and I see a clown
His smile makeup-deep
He’s hiding a pain incomprehensible
Putting on a face
for mom
and sis
and all the strangers
and everyone else.
’89 holds another meaning for me
“And,” not “Or.”
It was warm nostalgia
just like everyone else
It held more than ferris wheels, you see?
Sure, grease paint makes smiling easy.

1989. I was 1984.
It was the year
Mom fed me to the wolves.
Or, they took what they wanted while she wasn’t looking.
My heart taken out,
lifted up,
and shattered.
I learned how to smile without thinking.
I forgot how to laugh for a while.

You don’t break all at once.
I had to have my heart shattered
again and again.
Then, my mind broken daily.
That finally did it for me.
Nothing else between my ears or in my heart.
Just unsafe and more dangerous.

Around here, people smile to show trustworthiness.
That got too tiresome.
What’s unsafe? Less dangerous???
What have you done – just to end the pain?
And it never ends.
It’ll ebb and flow.
Bullshit. I ordered oblivion!
People got mad and scared
When they saw an empty-eyed, blank smile.
It reminds them of something.
Then, you get more pain from them.
Or, there’s just… not a fucking thing left to give in there.
Hollow, remember? That’s what was left
by all those greedy people.
So, I try to find something,
But it’s fleshy nothing.
Then, I try putting stuff there
The people I let inside,
they also try putting stuff there.
And I’ll fall in on myself.
Like yolk being put back where you found the egg.