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Leah Poole Osowski: Female with Head of Flowers after Salvador Dali—female figure with head of flowers—1937

November 17, 2015 by PBQ

Does she see with her stamens? Cry in pollen
and bees? A face in the desert

must wilt, but look at her saunter, a swagger
of hips, a leading thigh. Like a mockingbird

chest the curve of her belly,
shoulders dabbed with the scent of stature.

Waterspouts spin from their coasts, cross
prairies when she calls and this man is bending

into fossils following her.
She’s the axis

around which he oscillates and she’s all
that he sees. Horizon and gauze.

He’s a hula-hoop at her slender waist,
her turning torque the centripetal force

that keeps him in orbit. A pencil sketch
of a man, all stem. She’s front and center

on the wall above my bed and from below
I see the tossed fragments of bone

at her feet, how easily he could be erased.
She’s the type of woman people change

their shirts for. She must be why I wake up
in the middle of every night, and strip

to skin in sheets,
my scalp a sweat fire of blooming asters.

Filed Under: Contributors 92, Issue 92, Poetry, Poetry 92 Tagged With: Contributors 92, Leah Poole Osowski, Poetry, Poetry 92

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