J. Allyn Rosser
Not quite cupping, not quite tearing her breast;
not exhaustion, not grief, nor anything so simple
as despair. Her contortions radiate
a voluptuary pleasure in aloneness,
even or especially with the sculptor watching,
grabbing at the rock he will make of her,
chiseling, wiping off and blowing and
chiseling, looking into her darkest recess
open to view because he’s got her in a crouch
clutching one ankle, one elbow leaning on
the other ankle, drooped head resting — rather,
cast against — the massive shoulder that turns out to be
her giant knee, her own knee as if it were
some other’s. One hand not-hers not-not-hers
and one full frontal — look. So what?
She doesn’t care who sees the passageway
no man enters fitly.
The sculptor sucks his knuckle,
squints, calibrating her isolation.
She feels like laughing at his effort to get it,
the anguished angle of her neck he wants.
She’d get away from herself if she could.
She’d have her all to herself if she could.
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