the poem itself

the battle is there

the war unwaged

the magic trick as yet

unperformed

and the shadow is there

the shape laying latent in the yet-to-be-formed

a geodesic world, contorted

into clean proportion

just lines still in the surface

and the mind is flat

as the painting or the tv screen is flat

flat with delusions of physical depth

flat as the path is flat

pocked with holes and gravity wells

just waiting, open mouth covered,

for a food to stumble

And I call it forth from the featureless abyss

the awareness not-yet-aware:

the plastic of her gaping body

waiting for the sculptor's caress

the morphogenesis of a lover's touch

the mutation that rages from

a dark and impassioned whisper;

and the maiden is no sooner

maiden than she is lover and

mother and child

closing as she opens

thieving as she gives

and the process is completion

the work is the finished work

but the others,

the others who've gone before,

they work their way in, too:

working out their uncertainties,

undergoing manifold shapes-

swollen breasts, languid hair,

bluing veins barely covered-

they carve their many breasts

their textures of hair

and their blood, flat and thin and perfect,

out of her body;

resenting having seen

their reflection