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Artemisia Gentileschi A woman in a man's world, a woman making a claim, choosing her own body as the source of inspiration, wearing, as Pittura did, a gold chain bearing the mask of imitation: her tousled hair and muscled arms, the shifting gold-green colors of her dress, her sleeve rolled to the elbow, the light striking  her brow and the shadow made by the mask-shaped charm against flesh, the double mirrors she used to paint herself, the act of it captured mid-gesture, the paint laid out as her father taught her: white near the thumb then red, brown, green, her well-curved body bending around the canvas, the calculated self-image occupying the full height of the picture, her unromanticized face, dramatically lit, composed, the bare bodice, the rolled-up sleeve, her eyes turned upward, her right arm raised, its movement frozen, the mind in motion, her wide, searching gaze.

Historians will tell you my uncle wouldn't have called it World War II or the Great War plus One or Tombstone over My Head.

The whiskey stink of rot has settled in the garden, and a burst of fruit flies rises when I touch the dying tomato plants. Still, the claws of tiny yellow blossoms flail in the air as I pull the vines up by the roots and toss them in the compost. It feels cruel. Something in me isn’t ready to let go of summer so easily. To destroy what I’ve carefully cultivated all these months. Those pale flowers might still have time to fruit. My great-grandmother sang with the girls of her village as they pulled the flax. Songs so old and so tied to the season that the very sound seemed to turn the weather.

1. Morning of Crystal This is the deathless body, and this the land’s blood … and here the wine-laced sky over Iowa resembles a heavenly parfait. In one more day Des Moines will be diapered by first snow. A young girl, barely real, glazes the sidewalk with a stupid look. Iowa in winter always dumbfounds the love in us. Before long, nothing opposes the weight and resolution of this sky, this wilderness of earth hardening. When heaviness strikes like a clock glowing incandescently, the season opens to itself, as if a familiar stunt in a traveling show, a fabulation only a touched young girl can devise for any new world. Des Moines. November 1973 2. Cooking the Cold

I That was I, you heard last night, When there rose no moon at all, Nor, to pierce the strained and tight Tent of heaven, a planet small: Life was dead and so was light. II Not a twinkle from the fly, Not a glimmer from the worm; When the crickets stopped their cry, When the owls forbore a term, You heard music; that was I. III Earth turned in her sleep with pain, Sultrily suspired for proof: In at heaven and out again, Lightning! —- where it broke the roof, Bloodlike, some few drops of rain. IV What they could my words expressed, O my love, my all, my one! Singing helped the verses best, And when singing's best was done, To my lute I left the rest. V So wore night; the East was gray, White the broad-faced hemlock-flowers: There would be another day; Ere its first of heavy hours Found me, I had passed away. VI What became of all the hopes, Words and song and lute as well? Say, this struck you —- "When life gropes Feebly for the path where fell Light last on the evening slopes, VII "One friend in that path shall be, To secure my step from wrong; One to count night day for me, Patient through the watches long, Serving most with none to see." VIII Never say —- as something bodes —- "So, the worst has yet a worse! When life halts 'neath double loads, Better the taskmaster's curse Than such music on the roads! IX "When no moon succeeds the sun, Nor can pierce the midnight's tent Any star, the smallest one, While some drops, where lightning rent, Show the final storm begun —- X "When the fire-fly hides its spot, When the garden-voices fail In the darkness thick and hot, —- Shall another voice avail, That shape be where these are not? XI "Has some plague a longer lease, Proffering its help uncouth? Can't one even die in peace? As one shuts one's eyes on youth, Is that face the last one sees?" XII Oh how dark your villa was, Windows fast and obdurate! How the garden grudged me grass Where I stood —- the iron gate Ground its teeth to let me pass!

instead of entrance Goodbye means Avoir Sved’s dream said from nowhere of aliquant angles some spindle of the sun empirically facted deafening skin open and afterwards a cough is a couch idled into without rain an island easily a third worse Indigo with a flame-red tongue

Chide me not, darling, that I sing Familiar thoughts and metres old: Nay, do not scold My spirit’s childish uttering. I know not why ’t is that or this I murmur to you thus or so: Only I know It throbs across my silences, It blows over my heart,—a long Infinite wind, again, again! Again! and then My life kneels down into a song.

Plum black & the blush white of an apple shoulder, melon & cream, in tones to list the flesh; in light, washed colors off at last & textures sheer with damp I slowly pull from you with your quick help. Weekend's ample procrastinations to forget the least of what we want to do. April, half a blast of cold, half new light, green & simple. Now dusk. Now fear. We pencil what we owe on this short form, our numbers good enough. The goose-neck glare undoes how we spent the day. Each bite each bee-sting kiss each bitten O all aftertaste. Later, at the drop-off, postmark queue, we joke: "Now we can die!"

Despite all their fervor     they were headed somewhere   limp   in the intellect     nursery rhyme dialect headed   somewhere   all   circumference     hunnid   something for Sumerian   tablet happy meals   where you get     to munch   the   code-cold   sun upfront     the rest   when you’ve     eaten a bit of rat flesh   in the shape of yesterday     perishing youth addiction : Future dreams of codeine nibbles the white nipple wedged between him and his     soul   stice staaay sis what is this?     passes out     on the battlefield, improviser  /    wisest man I ever   mumbled   alongside     Power   with all the wars   in it ain’t shit     in   a   flawed   system     besides   self-destruction   may all our enemies   become powerful   and empty   in the west   while we sell our bodies   these   mumbled   prayers codeine   ain’t got nothin to   do     with my   love, child   either labor in the holds was painless bled ’til the chains lost their grip and there are   tapes   to prove it

One spring day I saw the shadow of a strawberry tree lying on the moor like a shy lamb asleep. Its heart was far away, suspended in the sky, brown in a brown veil, in the sun’s eye. The shadow played in the wind, moving there alone to make the tree content. Here and there it shone. It knew no pain, no haste, wanting only to feel morning, then noon, then the slow-paced journey of evening. Among all the shadows always joining eternal shadow, shrouding the earth in falseness, I loved this steady shadow. And thus, at times, it descends among us, this meek semblance, and lies down, as if drained, in grass and in patience.