After Seeing Venus

After Seeing Venus

I don’t know how much you saw of it the day you drove through

the morning to visit my apartment

and all the scattered

charcoal and bits

of rags I used to wipe my hands clean

as if I didn’t have enough to wash,

spaces my hair and face

places days later I’d see the Ash

Wednesday dot on my neck under my ear.  You’d said you wanted

a hat a certain kind of hat and I thought

I saw one once in a shop so I said

and you drove down to meet me.  I think

the cliché is going off

the deep end and your ruse was a tweed

Irish hat and when you arrived

you were sore for a while all those hours of sitting

and changing lanes from rural to highway

and maybe you’d come just to talk rather than save me

but I caught you by the eye

or an eye on the drawing on the easel of the woman

headless

armless

on one side to the shoulder on the other just above the elbow

and you didn’t make a sound you didn’t

only said very calm after a breath blown out

or not blown really

but eased the way a tire’s eased by a little prick

and we can drive on for weeks and not know a thing

and you said well she can’t resist can she

                                not being able to

                                see or put out

                                her hands

and right then I wanted you

to stand next to her and rub her

out, with the great flat span of your hands

smear where her neck ended into empty space

where a bird might

find a purchase

and deliver all his shit

down her back I wanted you

to throw up your hands

and run

to get them, and after more arrive

while you watch

run them off them off too with a shout

and love me back

from all that stone.  You’d found me

alive and maybe that was enough

for you.  You didn’t look at the woman again

in fact you kept your back to her

and while you sipped your tea

you said everything to me but what
he'd said later

you’d come all that way to say:

                               

                                I want to take you

                                                to bed let me

                                                this once

                                                touch you there so you’ll remember it

                                                like it was

                                                love

but the easel

but the dark smear on my cheek,

the one that couldn’t be

rubbed off

and that’s were you touched

and the other places on my body that were still whole:

                and you were brief

                and the next day after you’d left

                I started

                painting her breasts

                and I thought don’t they

                look fabulous

                just as you must’ve

                imagined them.