Les Demoiselles Opaques

Three women sit for snapshots
on a stone fence.

Feet limp like damp leaves,
hair flowing like whisky,
dark wide mouths
the shutters of speech.

The man with the camera
loves them,
their precise vitals,
the length and song of their limbs,
their silvery flesh.

Fright covers laughter
as the women blink
at each sharp flash.

Who among them knows
the garments of desire,
threadless
and without duration?

Or the way the wind
settles in the creases
of their skins?

Or the chaos of memory,
hollow like shadows
in a black-and-white
photograph?