One thing, another, or perhaps both: 1 question for Alissa Fleck

Alissa Fleck's poem "Honeymoon Period" is live today on our site.

Why, we wonder, is she not a painter?

Well actually I am a painter. I've made about three paintings in my lifetime and they form a triptych of sorts. Each of the three paintings is a replica of the same photograph of my boyfriend and me, each lacking in any nuance (any nuance is purely accidental, or borne of a loss of interest in finishing that particular painting.) I presented the triptych to my boyfriend for Christmas, and only afterward realized how intensely creepy it was to present him with the same image of us, peering somewhat terrified out at the camera (I don't know—that's what happens with paint), obsessively painted over and over again. So that was sort of the birth and death of my painting career.