robert eastwood \ winter 2014

*

The Writing Group

Celia's honey-black, refugee skin,
her soft convexities––so ripe––
she nervously laced one red-tipped finger

in her hair as she read, curling a ringlet,
again & again, as if she coiled a wisp of air.
Our Celia (who models to support herself

& her child) writes incessantly
about the ineradicable lien on an artist
who cornered her as she dressed

after a figure-drawing class.
Last night she spread herself down a wall
in mispronounced words

in soft Cuban singsong––about a dream,
ripped underwear, & crying in a dark corner.
We grunted as we usually do,

a shallow approbation when any poem
is finished. Her grammar was atrocious.
As for bad dreams, they tend to feature

desperation, and Celia's strove
for consolation after rifts in dream territory.
That could work well, or not, in a poem.

Then Sue said, In my dreams, it's not
intentional as well. Yet I’m so blatant––
I want to hide my cleavage, but I can't,

I’m a lure of pressed-togetherness.
That’s my scary place... my tits verge an abyss.
Celia murmured, si, si. Again we grunted.

A pinch of flesh makes a different kind
of nightmare––a trap by being female.
Night lets go (as we did) with a shrug

when dreams end, & you open cautious eyes
to a world settled into parallels of light
on all the safe things you’ve left about you. 

We made no comment on Celia’s poem, 
ignored her eyes pulling at our faces.
Don’t tell but show, written on the wall.

*

Robert Eastwood’s work has appeared in many journals, recently in The Dirty Napkin, Wild Goose Poetry Review, Full Of Crow, Legendary, Softblow, Up The Staircase Quarterly, and Loch Raven Review. His chapbooks, The Welkin Gate, Over Plainsong, Night of the Moth are by Small Poetry Press. He has twice been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. 

*