Cover

Dedication

To the most beautiful

“To name ourselves rather than be named

we must first see ourselves …

So long unmirrored in our true selves

we may have forgotten how we look.”

— LORRAINE O’GRADY

I.

Blueprint

As I lay on the prickly grass, grasshoppers chattered

in my hair. I stroked the ground like a beard. No one

sang. The whole sky was watching. It’s animal

piss in the dye pot that makes indigo blue. Blue

seeped out of me, but I wanted to forge it myself.

I was obsessed with making. The yellow leaves

browned; the sugar pine needles refused

to shed. I couldn’t get the pigment right, it kept turning

to mud. I had attempted this before, making wine

from another’s body, stamping and stomping

my grape-stained feet. When I rose, I left the print

of a woman behind. I noticed the pear tree, how it gave

without question; I asked anyway, was asking

again, collecting broken seashells and tiny

elephant figurines. I needed a herd of blue.

I soaked black beans for the color they left. My blue

was a habit, a kind of river I stepped into—sometimes

crossed—because it held the sky so perfectly.

I swung the axe. I swam with my arms.

I hammered nails—though crookedly. Timber

was my sacrum, timber were my metatarsals,

timber was my lungs’ pink flesh, timber was my skull.

I was a blueprint, blue on blue, mapless

but for those warm bones and my red heart barking.

—And when I turned without making my skirt

a basket, when I turned from all the fallen

pears, the sky was full of shaking: wet

with river-water. It wasn’t rain that fell—whatever it was

I collected in the cups of my hands.

On Seeing and Being Seen

I don’t like being photographed. When we kissed

at a wedding, the night grew long and luminous.

You unhooked my bra. A photograph

passes for proof, Sontag says, that a given thing

has happened. Or you leaned back to watch

as I eased the straps from my shoulders.

Hooks and eyes. Right now, my breasts

are too tender to be touched. Their breasts

were horrifying, Elizabeth Bishop writes. Tell her

someone wanted to touch them. I am touching

the photograph of my last seduction. It is as slick

as a magazine page, as dark as a street

darkened by rain. When I want to remember

something beautiful, instead of taking

a photograph, I close my eyes.

I watched as you covered my nipple

with your mouth. Desire made you

beautiful. I closed my eyes.

Tonight, I am alone in my tenderness.

There is nothing in my hand except a certain

grasping. In my mind’s eye, I am

stroking your hair with damp fingertips. This is exactly

how it happened. On the lit-up hotel bed,

I remember thinking, My body is a lens

I can look through with my mind.

Two Girls Bathing