Longing to grasp the familiar, names
against the anonymous
appendages & naked flesh, a nipple the eye
could nuzzle, to hide in
dark islands of hair, I near the photo—
as if the body erotic
could shield against the camera’s scalpel.
In its distance, the bodies
without faces line a riverbank, shade
into some darker shadow,
obeying the desire of gravity. I’m thinking
of Iraq, how they lay out
each disinterred nest of femurs & ribs
on separate sackcloths,
trying to punctuate the run-on sentence.
After making love, once,
you said every face, split in half, fit
so precariously, so comically,
we spent the next half hour shading one side
of our faces in the mirror,
then the other. This world is centaur: half
daydream, half nightmare,
not knowing if we’re awake or dreaming.
Wandering the gallery, we drift
onto an imagined balcony
of bodies jamming the crossroads, im
-mobile sculpture of
pure fact, dangling odd-angled & earth
-bound us.