Woman Being Held by Two Policemen
Buy Issue for $25 at JHUP- Woman Being Held by Two Policemen*
Her arms are pulled back, by white noise in this photo, then blend into the crowd as onlookers, moving cars and titles screaming cliché. Images of her right eye’s stare, curled lip, breeze-blown cut are forgettable. The chin-strapped officer with a wedding ring and rhyming bow tie reads overkill.
The pairs of areola-sized buttons over her torso on her buttoned-down shirt conceal curved breasts; yet ripple with the unmistakable abs of Apollo. The photo’s dramatic cropping of legs with both lapels stopping short at the shoulder lets you take a second look and wonder: is she Artemis, his twin? Conversations grow louder, echo Rilke remarking on the ripe gaze in her right eye while Wright on a hammock, points to the chicken hawk floating in the sign above her. I feel the tension on this woman’s left wrist twisted to the fist. But the focus is on the torso— its beauty, a timeless, steadfast exclamation. [End Page 713]
Carlo Paul is a graduate of the University of Maryland, College Park, where his work first appeared in campus periodicals Stylus and Eclipse. His work also appears in Cave Canem’s anthologies, including Gathering Ground: A Reader Celebrating Cave Canem’s 10th Anniversary.
Footnotes
* After black-and-white photograph by Bruce L. Davidson.
