The one we look at as the one cursed
hangs her orange beast-face, a block for a breast
angular, vacant might-be eyes or maybe some shape
screwed to fit the composition of the idea, the abstraction,
the thing,
a smile or simply a slit through which you can draw
your ticket and enter the gate
(I’m afraid, sir, you’ll find only paint)
. . . he was using the vague semblance of women
to turn the century
crude nudes, meat too pink, too undercooked
to eat or flay or were they pre-flayed, tenderized
women dressing their hair, corkscrewed eyes
in the mirror, part-skin, part-stone
oh, but look at those tones!
—fit for the tomb—
a box with limited shadow
so there was limited light
around them
in another country
in another country the women are fed and fed by their men till dull
their bellies dragging from room to room
unceasingly fed lest they burn a little off lest they thin out
their perfect skin obscene as the moon-beyond-full lopsided wheezing
what are they doing growing enormous losing their chins nothing to keep
up no stiff lip mouths swallowed by their own flesh then eyes then nose
then
can’t smell his approach again
limp river: a dance
limp river she was stretched among men
& their bend their garbled hands stretched her
from stone to stone ribboned her around
the heron’s leg propped her
head on a stabbing rock
thrust fistfuls of minnows through her veins
& when they wrung her flesh
to drips the bank weakly bled
the deer stood around
in stiff registry
the audience clapped
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