I know this room as well as any prisoner
knows his cell, the harsh white pallor
tingeing the calamine rawness
of my skin infirmary green as pinioned
by his gaze I lie exposed across this
old brass bed, drowned cadaver on
a mortician’s marble slab. Though I give
everything I have, hold nothing back,
he barely sees me. A woman, a dog
for him they’re the same. At night
he breathes in my civet sweetness, by day
I’m an experiment in bald flesh;
nipples, pubic hair, my open thighs
terrain for his palette knife, the sable
brushes lying on the paint-clotted stool.
Crow-like he picks me clean.
My fan of fallen hair offers no protection
as he peels back my paper skin.
.
Outside his high windows
the winter morning is dark with rain;
buses, taxis, cyclists
swish through the glistening
mica streets as if there was
somewhere they needed to go.
