In the Image of Man

I must quit the attempt

for I am able to draw the sinuous thick hairs, the

oval slick face, the jagged

edges of a jaw,

and bushy brows.

But as I begin the contour

of the eyes

The Image of Man ceases.

For these lead circles

Mark my man a woman.

I try, I try, I try.

Yet all I create

Are pages of grim, brash,

Starved women, who,

Unable to eat, breathe,

Are left behind the blue bars,

dreaming in the white twilight.

Lashes batting, iris still

She watches, unmoving.

Lead fills in no mouth,

Bears no heir to a nose,

I have left her there,

And she, my babe,

Pleads for sustenance and beauty.

Burning to be.

Begs me, oh Creator,

to finish with her; accept

a brutish girl; one I sketched

in my image but cannot allow

forward unless her eyes betray

her to my club, no girls allowed.

I have passed her a hundred times

Nor cared to see.

I allow her struggle.

I leave her.

Tucked away in the pages of past memory.

Years pass, but she has stayed

a girl in the same spot.

Perhaps, a woman, too.

The weight she bore like books

stacked upon her chest,

have left wrinkles and muddled her face.

I barely recognize her now. Her

Jagged jaw not so; The once thick, short

Hairs all a mess of grey now.

But still, her eyes pierce me,

Like a paper cut.

Sharp, intense, quick,

Blood brooding and soon to rise.

Revenge.

Could you not accept my disfigured

female form as you could so easily

a man’s?

I ignore her; throw her into my trash—

Last night’s leftovers soak her through.

The eyes begin to dissipate

Ah, perhaps a drawing of a man?