because the painting is old and not yours.
Blazing red, bison hulk
over slim human shapes.
But lines of skull and horn, hoof and calf
are tender as a lover’s traced curve,
her side’s slope from rib to hip.
All red, faded but raw, a bloody color
because it is blood, and fat.
Some once-alive beast, insides ground
with rock to powder. How right –
the rendering made from the real.
The stone would feel ragged, the shapes
smooth, dusky dust-flaking shapes in the palm.
At night, in the park, what I could say
wasn’t enough when I asked my friend,
Do you want to do stuff?
That, she said, meaning the unspoken sex word, that
opens a whole ‘nother can
of words. She messed up her metaphor
but it made more sense, the feeble conversation
spilling out, dark, dirt-clumped and wriggling.
That, she said, wasn’t necessary.
Words are a poor vessel for desire,
but less lonely a place than inside skin.
Through the painted figures winds
a thin red line. Some form of magic,
says the placard on velvet robe cutting me off
from a life preserved and contained.
I am keeping my hands to myself.
I am keeping myself to myself.
The line ties red outline to outline –
umbilical cord, I think,
connecting all of them, all
wrenched from one gaping womb.
What is necessary? Touch is.
Reach into me, remind me
that body, if anything,
is bridgeable. Skin, soft barrier, bare-
ly containing all this living,
can it hold us back from each other?
Reach. And make it hurt.
That pain is duller than our distance.
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