RSS 2.0 FeedNudes
The artist sketches
the shadows and lines
of lips and breasts –
the women always shift
positions. Most have a leg
lifted in mid-dance, nude
pirouettes, then spent
he drapes their torsos
over a charcoal chair.
In the dimming studio
lights the curves
and arcs of the elbows
are not unlike the wings
of moths. Silver against chalk,
they do not so much fly
as survive. They are saving
themselves from drowning,
they are gasping for light
as he gazes at the flicker
and clink of their soft bodies
sounding against the soft
bulb of his canvas, calling them
names they will never understand
why he says they are beautiful.
Alicia Hoffman lives, writes and teaches English in Rochester, New York. Her poems have been published in Red Wheelbarrow, Redactions, Pirene's Fountain, Poets/Artists, Boston Literary Magazine, Oak Bend Review, Writer's Bloc, Orange Room Review, etc. She writes because, as Wislawa Szymborska once said, "I prefer the absurdity of writing poems to the absurdity of not writing poems.”