Two Bowls of Milk (5 page)

to vomit out yourself? Soon

you’ll fill this field and never be

alone, and that’s my fear.

Not mine, this woman’s nostrils

widening to furry tunnels;

her mouth a cabinet of enamel,

pebbles burrowed in her gums.

Not me, this lip-gape, this neck

he forces back with one of his hands.

Hers clutch each other, in prayer,

in thanks. I know what she wants:

for his heat to melt her freckles,

smooth her brow, restore the nose

she had before she spent an hour

looking in the mirror. For him to see her

perfected like that. For how long

did I adore that photograph of me

and the man I love – lips open

unto each other, shut eyes resplendent –

before he pointed out my nipple

flaring in a corner? I slid the picture

in a drawer, arranged my dress

in folds across my chest. I avoided lenses.

An object is its story, so: a bowl

was once broken and became this

relic embellished with a maiden –

to hide cracked sardonyx

and burn between her stiff wings

a wick over oil. Encased and labelled,

she pores over an empty bowl

held whole inside a patterned shell of gold.

I am alone. I admire from above,

her arched body not unlike mine

but bare to naked gazes. Then bend

and find the gold that holds her there

(and keeps this elegance together)

is an ancient gorgon mask: mutter

underneath her song, rumble of guts.

Snakes I didn’t know I harboured

start to wake; my features, granite,

crack. I have seen. I have been seen.

A naked woman walking, snap

by snap, drops her handkerchief,

picks it up, moves on, always a step

ahead of me. Farther down the wall,

she pours a bucket of cold water

over another naked woman …

naked too the scream when the torrent

hits, although – because – both knew

what was expected.

A man watched through a lens

(her walking, a horse lunging

forward) and clicked to still each change

as it was changing. I follow the fetlock,

swell of the striding woman’s calf,

watched by hidden cameras

of the gallery. A guard clicks his metal

counter as I leave the exhibit,

leave behind the air I moved through,

still pretending flow

is true: each wave

that shivers pebbles on the shore is no event,

just continuity, the water slipping back

beneath the froth and smoothing down the stones

for another inrush. I pretended love

was inevitable, as though there were no moment

when a certain neuron clicked and I said
this
–

yes, this
– and plunged ahead,

let the handkerchief get muddy

under others’ shoes. I picked up the bucket,

angled it above myself and let the icy water

flood me: wondering if anyone was watching –

wanting this image for future

witness: this is me, deciding, permitting

my body to be overtaken.

A dark metal stinking

through my panties,

stockings, skirt.

Strangers sniff my ability

to bear a child, my deliberate

lack, neglected cave

expelling iron ooze

and shutting up.

What could begin

in that rank enclosure

walled in ruddy moss?

Lascaux’s blotched

animals and spears

prove that life is possible.

But I did not come

from that place.

I arrived complete in a white

peroxide box, my name

in pink plastic sealing my wrist.

My horse-shaped birthmark

soon faded. I’m human

once a month.

Venus
, Lucas Cranach the Elder, c. 1518. Oil on linden.

Love, the Romans said they made you –

and how small you have become.

Barefoot on stones, you have no need

of fig leaves, for you’ve learned

to keep the body in itself and not to let

the breasts go loose. What child

could your hips span other than yourself?

In fear you’ve put on heavy necklaces

as though you were not enough. Your

painter must have thought you wanton,

his neck aflush with shame at posing a girl

unclothed for Art. Your shame at having

flesh is greater. Would you rather lack

a body and so be safe from probing

fingertips and gazes, be safe from what

that body wants? I have wanted

to turn away from the sudden ivory

of your skin, too rare a thing,

endangered, endangering its self

and mine by such exposure.

Hope I
, Gustav Klimt, 1903. Oil on canvas.

Impossible the taut globe of your belly.

What does it not contain? You trust

that each nail, once born, will be

immaculate, as you have become, having

shunned man’s touch for months and carried

in your body another body’s weight.

Your feet are lost behind some monster

wave of shadow those masks behind you cast:

Death, Decrepitude. Against their knowing

sockets’ gaze, you hold your elbows bent

as wings to make a phoenix of your hair.

He hated that your ordinary reddish

freckles turned into a universe of far,

insistent stars, that you were shapely

and misshapen, vertical and utter, and loomed

inside his doorway – his model grown

to distances he couldn’t span. Your

certain look fixes us both in our places

and will not fix anything. How I narrow

in your eyes to barren one, to mothered.

Transformations No. 5
, Jack Shadbolt, 1976. Acrylic, latex commercial paint, black ink, pastel, and charcoal on illustration board.

Yes, she is here, she is real –

she smells of iron afterbirth; her mad

red wingflaps knock loose chunks of dirt,

shit, the hundred shades of myth.

She’s the mess you were punished

in school for making, she

thinks herself resplendent, she thinks herself

important. What have you given into the air?

You’ve gone too far and already

she’s beyond you. No one will rest.

Not content to let you be the chrysalis

that’s left, she breaks you as herself

in fragments, she does not recognize

any of our shut-tight shapes. Nightmare

the caterpillar had, mouth made of wings,

salamander come through fire,

she bursts into bits of flag and firecracker.

Father basks in her quick-given

flame and says he has created.

If she came to me I could not

give my meagre breast to suck, I would want

her every colour for myself and she would laugh

with her worm-mouth she will devour

the world as she must.