Of the face in general, let me say it’s a house
built by men and lived in by their dreams.
When you’ve been plucking eyes
out of the floorboards as long as I have,
you’ll see this, just as you’d see
the patience it requires
to render an eyebrown, half an hour
and an understanding of architecture.
When you see your body,
think its opposite: not the bridge,
but its lighted face reflecting the water,
some other city as seen from a ship—
your forehead, once ponderous,
now light as umbrellas—
still not beautiful enough to make time stop.
The pleasure in being a woman’s
knowing everything’s borrowed
and can’t be denied,
as when you take apart a clock,
there’s always another inside.
Robin Ekiss, “The Opposite of the Body” from The Mansion of Happiness. Copyright © 2009 by Robin Ekiss. Reprinted by permission of The University of Georgia Press.
Source: The Mansion of Happiness
(University of Georgia Press, 2009)