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  • Praying Mantis, and: Woman in the Painting
  • Danusha Laméris (bio)

Praying Mantis

At first, I saw it in my garden, clingingto the fence behind a rosebush. Later,it appeared beside me in the grass.This went on—for weeks? A month?I can't be sure. I'd never seen one up close.Bright green, boggle-eyed, the odd,nearly automated movement. It seemedalmost prescient. Diviner. Alien. Priest.What would we know if our eyes could rotatebehind as well as ahead? The roseswere in bloom. Everything appeared as itshould be: grass trimmed, floors swept,a bowl of fruit on the kitchen table.My husband humming to himselfas he walked from room to room.Everyone I loved was alive. Sometimes,I felt those eyes pressing into the backof my neck, following me as Iweeded the yard. Then one dayI woke up and it was on the ceiling,hind legs hooked into the canopyabove the bed. Poised, perfectly still.Forelimbs held in that chronic gestureof supplication. It looked down at me,head cocked to the side, a cool expression—clean and pitiless—on its face. [End Page 129]

Woman in the Painting

One stands in her kitchen, bent at the waist,pouring milk from a ceramic jug. One reclineson starched sheets, wearing only a black bowtied around her neck. One lies, a blur of pastels,in her bath. One floats, face up, in a stream,her hair scattered with blossoms, her lifeless eyesturned skyward. The woman is a fallen fruitwaiting to be eaten. The woman is a flowerdecorating a vase in an empty room. She is waitingfor someone to inhale her scent. Her petals are fadingfading. The woman in the painting is bending overexposing the lily white of her back. She is holdinga child to her breast. She is standing in the half-shellcovering her sex. Sometimes a cherub kisses her parted lips.Sometimes an angel whispers in her ear, tells herwhat she must do next. She is caught mid-bath. She is caughtmid-frame. She is sitting, she is standing, she islying down, and we are looking at her dress,her curve of collar bone, heft of thigh. We arechecking out the angle of her chin, arc of cheek.O woman in the painting. I see you in your titanium whiteblouse, your alizarin lips, your sad umber eyes. I seehow carefully the painter has rendered you with hiswisps of sable. As if otherwise you might wake fromyour elegant repose. As if you'd rise, suddenly terrible,and tear through the landscape, cracking windowswith your fists, splintering door jambs, prying offthe shingled roof with your claws, your magnificent teeth.Even now I think I hear you coming closer, through the streets,down the field. O woman in the painting, tell me,what will you do now with so much hunger,what will you do with your anguish,with your sudden, immeasurable strength? [End Page 130]

Danusha Laméris

Danusha Laméris's first book, The Moons of August (Autumn House, 2014), was chosen by Naomi Shihab Nye as the winner of the Autumn House Press poetry prize. Some of her poems have been published in The Best American Poetry 2017, the New York Times, American Poetry Review, Gettysburg Review, Ploughshares, and Tin House. Her second book, Bonfire Opera, is forthcoming from the University of Pittsburgh Press in spring 2020. She teaches poetry independently and is the current poet laureate of Santa Cruz County, California.

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