Appeal to the Woman

Woman, whose graven portrait
bears up the plaster walls
of the museum:

woman of bold lines
that cut down into cream-brown paint,
of sable bones that curve
like bent nails
towards the canvas flesh,

woman of erasure
purged by a paint-knife’s strokes
for layers of repetition

when color-tools imprinted your form
in langorous series,

brushes fresh wands
for the medium
bristles slick with scarlet
or titanium white
blades of metal
crowned with rolls of blackness,

woman of the abject eyes
without pupils,
of the vague crook breasts,
she of scratches gaps blotches
and final ambiguity,

in your cloister do not forget
us passersby,
for it is our deaths
that your frame suspends
above the cold marble floor.