Morning After
Then bedbugs
crawl flat from the mattress
seams
the headboard’s upholstered
tufts
some slough
skin
as they emerge as nymphs
the adults
they bite me with their
two-tubed mouths
*
Yesterday a letter
typed and
signed by [ redacted ]
I read
I ate
ate that letter of myself
word
word
word
so many
made up stories
none “Dear [ ]”
*
The morning
the bedbugs
I retch the letter
loose
read again again again
in the light
Where the skins of nymphs
my
blood
soil the sheet
I
strike a match
Fingers close to the flame
I cook on this fire I make
Abstracts (Paintings of Egon Schiele, 1909-1911)
1. Self Portrait Drawing a Nude Model in Front of a Mirror
Looked past his eyes diffuse in the soft
dark restaurant to my reflection in the
mirror behind the underlit bar,
choked down a third of the tequila that was mine
and stared at
myself staring at him as in one
throat opening gesture he swallowed
his double shot whole.
Hot on looking at the blush
I drew on my chest with tequila, the bloom
of blush I drew from his neck with my staring,
I asked how he drank his shot so easy,
without gagging, Oh,
it isn’t pleasant,
and crossed his legs.
2. Portrait of Poldi Lodzinski
His eyes lit for the door;
opened it and he stood there,
head haloed by the backlit prayer flag,
hand leaving the liminal doorknob—
3. Portrait of Wally
The waitress fucked up our order and he
hastily reread the wine list to change the plan in mid-meal:
He would have a glass of the such and such red to go with his veal and I
would have a glass of the so and so white to go with my scallops
that I never actually ordered but were coming anyway.
I said I would drink the half-bottle of the excellent
cab-sauv we’d already agreed on, as
I couldn’t tell the difference anyway.
But now’s your chance to learn, he said.
4. Sunflower
His head droops above his coffee and eggs,
above an undershirt whose collar is ripping
from its yellowing body,
and he reaches a long hand
across to turn
a leaf of wilted newspaper.
5. Nude Girl with Crossed Arms (Gerti Schiele)
I should have recognized him as a brother.
Even in sleep, he turned his face from me,
left a modest profile, hid his brackish chest hair
with a lanky arm swung crosswise.
Still
the impolite line of black silk descending
always to his cock, his black chalk heap of pubic hair.
The window is square small and dirty
La Repasseuse, Pablo Picasso
The grey iron the grueling heft
the iron millstone mass of it
an extension of her taught arm
A yellow arm yoked to the handle
by a grey hand She is gaunt but tall
a wire hanger hinged at the sternum
she opens closes closed in and absent
Night at the window new and half blind
snags the corner of her cramping shoulder
descends the slant of her sloping neck
The window is square small and dirty
It blacks her eyes bruises her vision
Her eyes closing the iron cooling
her sight retreats tunnels inside
She presses by feel feels the night breeze
she adds water when it’s too dry
fires the iron and her icy fingers
when it’s too cold crumpled and soft
and she presses over the pillow slip
again Again she gathers the linens
In her ragged head a husband asleep
clean and swaddled a son a baby
*
Sarah B. Boyle hails from Pittsburgh, PA, where she writes and teaches high school English. Her work has appeared in Menacing Hedge, Storyscape, and elsewhere. She has an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College. Find her online at impolitelines.com.