A Commission

The nobleman's girl arrives, her skirt filling

up a doorway. Pale with light as the cake

layered like St. Bride's: architecture

mimicking nuptials to be devoured.

Velvet darkens her cheek.

Shadow darkens the velvet.

I take out brush and linger as if to adore

what on canvas must be re-

constructed: the silver

tonality of neckline, mustard

in the bodice braid. As a child

before my mother's table, I'd counted out such

colors of jars in mineral hues, crushed and blown

into hearts, used to transform the angles

of the body with. Apple green, a dust of fine blush

like the covering on damsons.

Rose hollyhock.

Spattered with the peruke's gray sheen,

now in her face, blood struggles

under the girl's mask of arsenic.

It is like watching something living

crawl beneath something dead.

I look at her and think of gods

who clasp nymphs in fountain

statuettes as if they wanted them to drown,

and wish their stone laurels could be stripped away,

the metallic sheen of silk

pulled from shoulders, gilding gone in preference

for the real form of us to stay put

and shine.

If I could I'd draw through the girl

a hardier seed than classical urges trailing off

into pastilles. More permanent

than the painted draperies or foot's arch

curve similar to any aqueduct's.

In my bedclothes later, the girl turns

to a collection of thin papers whispering.

I grip her slim wrists to chain her where she lays

with scarf and pillowcase.

Close my eyes. Imagine

the sheen of her young

body as it rises. Harder without the dress,

I believe. Broader

and strong, her boyish limbs churn and churn

like smoke in this white space between us

of my eternal bed, my need.