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January |
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a poem by Annie Rink
Wounded Woman (after a photograph by Reinfried Marass)
She sits on the dirty ground,
torso propped against a peeling wall,
head pinned there,
hair weeping onto her face,
her arms spread apart to the sides.
a brown wrapping paper
shudders in her left hand
the fingers of her right
clasp a detached steering wheel
as if clutching the wrist of a toddler
who's veered off the pavement.
her black heel has slid sideways off her foot
and panders the high arch
with the leer of the clinging strap.
her breasts hang like large medals
beneath her pleated top, and what of her vulva,
is it ripped at the seams like the white cotton skirt
that barely covers it, what of her womb,
tender core of her being, the cigarette butts
clustered around her other foot,
a mass of sperm about the ovum,
the full beer packs that lie beside her
like small coffins,
does her body yearn upwards,
will she make a helix of herself
as she did between many men's sheets?
torso propped against a peeling wall,
head pinned there,
hair weeping onto her face,
her arms spread apart to the sides.
a brown wrapping paper
shudders in her left hand
the fingers of her right
clasp a detached steering wheel
as if clutching the wrist of a toddler
who's veered off the pavement.
her black heel has slid sideways off her foot
and panders the high arch
with the leer of the clinging strap.
her breasts hang like large medals
beneath her pleated top, and what of her vulva,
is it ripped at the seams like the white cotton skirt
that barely covers it, what of her womb,
tender core of her being, the cigarette butts
clustered around her other foot,
a mass of sperm about the ovum,
the full beer packs that lie beside her
like small coffins,
does her body yearn upwards,
will she make a helix of herself
as she did between many men's sheets?