← v9n2, Fall 2010
Poetry · Volume 9, Number 2

Ochre ii

They have scurried to their moment, this botched alignment

Of the stars & planets. Mother is eye through slat,

She props them all, a juggler stasis-ed on a unicycle,

Dress spilling over chair legs, the Oriental’s

Snaking figurations & rosettes—both parallel

& askew, depth uncertain, the formal

“studio effect” that Mother planned

Disheveled as Burns’s spiky pudding bowl.

Mother labored mightily to still.

A handprint framed in ochre, quickened on a cave wall.