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  • Reclining Nude, C. 1977, Romare Bearden
  • Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon

You want to say she is peach-ripe, fragrant, Dark fruit sweetening around a hard, grooved seed. Say this: she is you—the tan parchment beneath her Florida sand as all things bring you Back there, to land your mother's love threatened Out of you, you out of it—you, a beached thing, Just made, and open for the sun. You, a black man's creation, His simplest collage, a woman. There comes a blue that smells like ocean and wet earth, blue That splits the face's mask and seeps into the eyes. An evening blue that ghosts you, outlines the hinted constellation Of yourself, blue that beads from your pores as you Scour a drenched page searching for form, or A man with sight enough to hang you in the sky. Hung up, against a wall, in the right light you are A museum piece, this wanton, sure as one patch of sea- Green, a triangle filtering light between The curve of your back and the crook of your elbow, Or the other, just above your shoulder, the contrast Of color. This brown almost defines you, the skin You are saved by, layered, paper. Look, the right hand, its long, thin fingers, brazen, freeing itself from the body.

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