Her creature is sinking into the page

reluctant to show his treasure

even to us, who know him, who have seen

those treasures before.

She can’t even hold a pencil

properly and I want to say

something cruel to her,

snap her out of whatever dream she’s in.

There’s a black bracelet around her wrist

from where a hand has held it. Who is this?

I ask. She shrugs. Please let me kill her.

How young she is, how pretty. I’ll think of her

the next time I look in the mirror, the next time

you call. There’s this girl, I’ll say. And then

lose it. Can’t

explain. Fury eating me from the knees up.

My husband comes to the show

and gives each student’s work his kind eye.

The girl is there

in a chair by the door. Looking at her watch. About

to cry. Nails making moons

in her palms.

No one congratulates her

on her creature; you can’t see him

from more than three feet away. Whoever she’s waiting for

never arrives and she leaves

after an hour, face shattered, and doesn’t

return. At the end of the semester I roll up her

work and put the tube in a closet

in case she comes for it. I call your office

again and again. I put on my winter coat

and don’t take it off

when I draw. Making the lightest marks.

Holding the pen by the throat.

THE VIRGIN

THE VIRGIN

I told it one night to a friend from school, her deep silence

in the studio, eyes fixed to mine. Can you believe it, I kept

saying. Can you believe that I. Our shoulders against the

stone wall I thought it would hurt her, a little, she who had

had no lovers, who had started the evening with pictures of

her sculptures and their great success, their themes global,

political, I was so eager to get her off them but she had tears

in her eyes, when I spoke, had I told it wrong? I went to the

desk, turned the old drawings over. Trailed off. She made

things out of iron, steel, enormous; a fire could not touch

her, nor a rip, nor a spill, and here I was, only paper, so easily

destroyed. I could feel her watching me, that silence of hers.

I had given away this thing and for the wrong reasons and

now could not take it back. It’s not like that, I said, and she

put her hand on my sleeve. Does he know?

LONG DISTANCE

LONG DISTANCE

(quiet) (silverware) What’s your kitchen like.

White.

Did you ever fuck in it?

Pardon?

Did a man. Fuck you in it. On the floor or against the stove or—

God, no.

(pause) Good, then. That’s good.

There was something I wanted to tell you.

What, darling.

Forgot.

Today?