Effaced Amy Winehouse
Ms. Hawthorn thinks about the space
where the sticker’s line drawing used to be,
showing how the singer in her afterlife
had hardened into a gaunt carapace.
Amy’s hair extensions were bundled
up into a cross between a beret
and a turban. Her face
sharpened. She was silent.
A matching powder blue wool suit,
white high-necked blouse, and pearls
covered her tattooed body
smeared with blacks, reds, and greens.
All this is gone,
the body cremated,
the sticker peeled off.
Ms. Hawthorn supposes
the voice will soon follow.
Previously published in Setu.
Dancing
in Watertown
Heat surrounds her, weighing her down.
Sweat on other people’s bodies pops
like the beat of this song.
She stands at the edge
of the dance floor, cut off
by funk from couples who touch.
A man slithers towards her,
reeling her in with ringless fingers,
far slower than this music.
Her back against the wall,
she pretends to dance. He keeps
reeling her in until she
peels herself off the wall.
Wary, in the small space
left to her, she circles him
without touching
until he breaks off
before the song is over.
He circles the room
to dance with
the
next girl who’s alone,
reeling her in
without touching,
then letting her go.
Originally published in Loch
Raven Review.
Imagine the young girl,
a dancer since she was
five or six, stepping over
this heavy wood frame
to skip across bamboo,
stepping free from her world
of corsets and stiff cloth.
Thick gold paint that shimmers
and gleams does not weigh her down.
Imagine the woman, body
pale except for rouge, no
longer imperious. This
time she holds a guitar,
smiles sweetly. She remains
on the other side of
the gilt frame. She stays in
the world of stiff corsets,
coal dust, and artists who
will paint her brown face as
white as their own.
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