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SANDRA BEASLEY |
The Faces
After the work of R. Avedon
The dancer as she stumbles, one arch
avalanching after the other. The drifter
as he smokes, chest collapsing into
bone.
The clerk in her garland of dollar
bills.
The girl who guts a snake with her hands,
a necklace of raw muscle. Her hands.
A woman whose skin swarms with
freckles.
A man whose skin swarms with
hornets.
The mother whose napalmed eye leaks
like a lemon in the cheesecloth socket.
The boy killer, his face smooth and blank
as February. His father, wearing a suit
and a sad, automatic smile for the
camera.
The faces gestated in gelatin, birthed by acid.
Even the howling mouth is kissed by light.
Portrait
I woke and you were weeping
as a child does, hot and senseless
from the dream. You refused
to be touched, shielding your face
from a bad sun, which was me,
or the camera, which was me.
You hate the body’s sweat
and hangnails, its pump and fade,
rubbing at your turnpike veins
as if to stop their thick traffic.
The first time we touched I felt
horses penned under your skin—
their restless breath, the push
of their hooves. I love you
for not running but understand,
I would love you for running.
The Story of My Family
You’re a tooth I tongue and tongue,
tasting the red of your loosening,
testing the sweet root of the hole.
The shudder and catch, the god spit,
and though I dip the bone in gold,
no lover wants to wear the necklace
of you. Carry you in my pocket
and you smolder. Sow the field with you
and you sprout in hours, white tips
thrusting through the meal soil—
one book says a bean pushes its husk
away, hauling the used body to the
surface;
one book says the army is born whole,
fingers clawing toward any sky.
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