- Frenzy of Exultations
After Władysław Podkowiński’s painting by the same name
See, nothing obscene—two bodies in profile. Compare: the matte, onyx horse has a suggestive shadow
where the genitalia should be obvious—stallion, easy symbol of dominance—beneath the lustrous,
opal woman, her arrow of pubic hair hidden by her thigh. She possesses the painting’s only color:
her flickering, padparadscha hair. This is the kind of woman I want to be—unabashed,
radiant from ankle to stomach, nipple to neck. They are a chiaroscuro—her knees, back, and shoulders lull
while the stallion pelts saliva, eyes roving. She defies the rampaging, his rearing with her only motion—
her flickering hair, crossing the line of metaphor into actual flame. Everything—like the blood hyphen
of the stallion’s tongue, every brush stroke, and my gaze—points to her face, the draped lines of her closed [End Page 112]
but smiling mouth and eyes—he bucks and bucks, making a hurricane of the background. She remains infuriatingly at ease.
What woman hasn’t been bucked off, trampled. And when did we take what should be open and hide them? Like cervix, Latin for neck.
Like pleasure, French for pleasure. [End Page 113]
Alicia Marie Brandewie won the Nazim Hikmet Poetry Competition, and her poems can be found in Redivider and Waccamaw.