on turned heads,
insistently blue skirt:
all are man-made
like the chaos giving
that woman’s face
the look of a dumb
slaughtered lamb.
In another place, music plays
where husbands dance
on a floor crowded
by equally as many limbs.
There no man snarls, hair torn
by an ogre-eyed mother
while his hands clutch
a daughter’s neck and leg.
8 comments:
Hey Bethie D. What a great collage of words. But can you help me with it?
"There no man snarls"?
Am I to see a man with his hair torn or being torn, a mother with eyes full of hatred, and a daughter who is being abducted?
Or am I to see a place (Perhaps in the mind of the dumb-lamb woman) a happier place where such things are not happening?
What are these "limbs" crowding the floor, and in a number equal to what? One limb for every man? It seems to suggets a slaughterhouse or a temple of sacrifice, with lambs being divided up, legs and necks.
The words read so powerfully, I feel like I should know wat tey are saying...but I don't!
thanks so much for commenting - this kind of thing is infinitely helpful to me.
The other place is real, this painting is based on the legend of the rape of the Sabine woman (on wikipedia if you want the whole story). There's different versions, but basically the Romans invited the Sabine husbands to a party and either kidnapped or convinced their ladies to leave with them while the hubbys were gone. So the answer is... both!
Yeah, the limbs part could be worded better. I found it interesting that on a dance floor, like where the husbands are, there are just as many people smashed together in a small space, but in this painting the closeness looks terribly gruesome.
Hope that helps... if you check back in a couple days I'll probably have the third stanza edited at least and you can let me know if it's less confusing.
Hold it, chick... you wrote this??
And now I have looked at the painting. EEK. That's some NC-17 stuff.
yes and yes.
you should come to Chicago and see it in real life. It's huge and absolutely terrifying.
yeah, definitely worth the drive!
oh no. the drive is made worth it by the conversation over coffee we're way overdue for.
Post a Comment