by Jehanne Dubrow
after
Antonio Canova’s sculpture (1787)
From a certain vantage point they
could
be lovers—the man
with
his arms encircling my
mother,
and both of them gone
marble.
He has woken her with
the
sound of broken wings. Her
blanket
is polished rock, cold
and
weighted to the bed. From
this
angle the knife is hidden,
although
it’s there, the way
an
arrow is always shooting through
this
story, desire a dart that
finds
the tender spot. Bodies
make
a space for gods to
intervene.
Tonight if there are
souls
like butterflies, then they
have
stilled. If beauty could be
bolted
in a box, if a deity could
say,
Don’t open this, then my
mother
might stay asleep
forever,
unbothered by the
monument
of those hands.
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