Dreaming of Picasso
All night an accelerating
geometry of eyes—hundreds
shaped like birds or boats
or beetles, simplified to dots
or crosses or a pair of 2s or mis-
matched diamonds, perfect zeros,
scoops of moon placed sidewise
or lengthwise on a face, slipping
out of orbit on a cheek, hung
under an ear, planted mid-forehead,
paper-thin planes of them,
each one alive and staring
from the dislocated faces of wives,
lovers, mothers, serene and lopsided,
splintered, wrenching, ravaged,
a proliferating gallery of women,
terraced in my head as I sleep,
and my own curious eye:
steering toward what it perceives,
capturing exact duplicates of each
stylized eye I run by,
as I race to comprehend
what I'm taking in, what expression
I'd see if I raised the mirror
to find my own eye, distorted
and floating above an iron cheek.
Copyright Credit: Francine Sterle, "Dreaming of Picasso" from Nude in Winter. Copyright © 2006 by Francine Sterle. Reprinted by permission of Tupelo Press.
Source: Nude in Winter (Tupelo Press, 2006)