Artist’s Statement: The integration of image and text has fascinated me for as long as I can remember but I’ve only begun to explore mixed media creations of my own in the last few years. I began with collage and branched out into bookmaking and found objects. “Risk!” as a mixed media piece, suggested itself when I found my late husband’s game during a pandemic-fueled cleaning of closets and cupboards. The poem is written on the borders of the board, echoing the spacing of the textual poem and laid out to create a contained statement within each fragment. “Risk!” is designed to be paired with the text poem so the connection between the board-as-art and the text version can be felt more keenly.

Risk!

I threw away your game today
and kept the new version,
miniature plastic militaries in the same
lidded boxes — infantry, cavalry, cannon.
The tiny wood blocks you played with well
into adulthood — painted yellow,
blue, pink, green, black, red —
now scattered in the trash. I’m anxious.
Today began with cows loose in the road.
Then I voted. Fog hovers over snow
patches in the pasture. Pink is now gray.
I discard the plastic, dig out the blocks,
hold the heartwood and remember
how you handled your bright armies.