Kathleen Mitchell-Askar
FIGURINE
In the earliest representations
the body is a brute rectangle
starved of a face.
Two small protrusions for breasts,
magic manifest as a sixth toe,
and a little pressure exerted
on the edge of a dull blade
yielded in the wet clay
the narrow inlet
by which man has always entered
the scene. But most prominent
is the dark gape at the torso’s center,
the hunger that roots
for nothing but a mouth
to pronounce itself
ulteriorly.
I bear the brunt of this hunger,
milk-flat,
wilted nipples,
whorls of pearlescent rivulets
where skin bulged and stretched
to accommodate
my children’s first exits.
The plank of my body,
what trap door
or ragged rim do I cover,
where with a false step
bodies fall out of and into
such featureless dark?