Fig. 5.
They tried to warn you about me | when I claim completeness
I’ll be gone and over it | in the meantime I’m breaking
into my linen sins | what will happen to this version of me
when the rats scuttle in with the flood
wipe the graphite | off with your tongue | they want
messy endings | to entertain them for a week
let’s take a moment | soak it all in | my first time | leaving
bite marks | bronze left outside greens its copper content
rabid ill-kissed on purpose | Rodin’s Gates of Hell | the weight
of a hundred civilians | sprawling in every canto
above the door panels | Dante looking down | elbow on his knee
Ugolino and his Children | Lancelot and Guinevere
and Paolo and Francesca and Adam and Eve
were meant to frame the gates | he attempted several | busts
of Eve that he could not complete | were later sold
This poetry suite is part of a longer project entitled “difficult to appear so”. It aims to meld the verbal and visual arts through the contemporary use of ekphrasis. The poems investigate the creation of art, anxiety of influence, and the perils of intimacy through the life and history surrounding the sculptor Auguste Rodin.