L’Origine du Monde

After the painting by Gustave Courbet

This painting would have once
been a whole woman.
Her head thrown back, legs
splayed in tangled sheets.
Like hers, my life
is cut from the one canvas.
I collage painted linens
to wear like a negligee.
I will not be ashamed of any stitch
I strip and toss before you
on the strip joint’s stage.
These faded scrips of life
pressed into frames.
And you can gaze
as I kick up my feet. Look now
where I draw the eye to light.
These sparkling plastic heels
shaped like life-size pistols—
ankle straps with rounds
of ammunition. The more I show
the more I’m keeping hidden.
My duller days
in austere offices. No neon
when I worked late then.
A few spare trees down in the square.
A thousand birds all trying to nest there.
Their screaming murmurations echoed
through my tower’s double glazing.
The motion-sensing lights
went dim around me
sedentary in a swivel chair.
Most dead animals—
however still—
will not form fossils.
And now there is no record
of my animal youth
moving free and limber
as I clambered to the ceiling
of the strip club’s windowless dark
where mirrors wall to wall
offered new masks
of my own face. I stared
through a hundred eyes
at everyone who watched me
dancing naked.
Stubble on my legs
and splendid everywhere
so whenever I laid back
on a stranger’s lap
I saw the world’s origin
refracted in a million shining facets.
Must the poem be a peep show
selling pieces of the self?
But no one can purchase this.
It is a gift. It is the past
kept in a shard of glass.
A splintered mirror ball,
a scrap of canvas
with a lipstick kiss.
A kick from stripper heels
adorned with bullets.
I learned, dancing, always
to point my toes. To make
my lines as bold
as brushstrokes in the strobes.
Do not mistake the painting
for the person.
That nude muse now
lives only in your head.
She’ll open up her legs
and shoot you dead.