SHE was tangled up in her own self-conceit, a woman,
and her passion could only flare through the meshes
towards other women, in communion;
the presence of a man made her recoil
and burn blue and cold, like the flame in a miner’s lamp
when the after-damp is around it.
Yet she seemed to know nothing about it
and devoted herself to her husband
and made him paint her nude, time after time,
and each time it came out the same, a horrible sexless, lifeless abstraction
of the female form, technically “ beautiful,” actually a white
machine drawing, more null than death.
And she was so pleased with it, she thought one day it would
be recognised as “ great.”
And he thought so too.
Nobody else did.