Nude Poetry, collage by Debra Grace Khattab
eavesdropping on women without faces
I.
the beautiful dress that cascades
its rippling flowers
over the painter's hand
is meticulously draped
under golden hair
that has butterflies brutally pinned in it
while the artist
carefully covered every facial feature
with common burlap
until the model is blinded
II.
this artist crawled up on her pedestal
only to die before she could finish
scraping her self away.
she took the trowel to her arms
and then her face,
trying to remove the unessential,
the expressions we mask our needs with,
but the essence also bears the mark of its removal
knowing the bones' need of its own flesh
and so her hands crack away in defeat
as she spreads open her smooth thighs
and births her own defiance
(Oakland Museum Poems, 2/23/97)