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Prairie Schooner 79.4 (2005) 82-84



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To the Statue of The Scribe In the Museum, and: I Used To Sit Close

To the Statue of The Scribe In the Museum

Your toes are long, your belly a small smooth berm.
The sign calls attention to your shoulder blades
the muscles of your calves and chest

your sketches of lion head and nestlings
Thebes New Kingdom Dynasty
Limestone, painted.

In front of you, a young man
in a tee shirt and ball cap
is kissing a young woman.

She has curly hair
caught up with a rubber band
at her nape. She kisses him

and kisses him and then reads,
as I do,
that you used only white and black

and that a scribe was also an artist,
his palette often placed in his tomb.
Her lips have been making the sound which means

they are not exactly wet not exactly dry,
that sweet pop when the curved expanse of lip
compresses flattens lets go reinflates recurves. [End Page 82]

In the darkened exhibit
people move like shadows,
like birds, to each pond.

Full lower lip, heavy eyelids.
Scent of breath which has been in the beloved's body.
There is a god who eats the sun and brings darkness.

I Used To Sit Close

I used to sit close to you
when you were driving,
the side of my leg against yours,
my hand resting on your thigh,
your hand resting on mine,
our eyes on the road ahead.

Such closeness of denim:
knee, hip –
shoulders if we so desired.
Such desire to blend, to lose oneself,

and when lost

such anger in the bones, such desire
to separate,

to save one's own hide,
however worthless it has been declared, [End Page 83]

a last-ditch effort to salvage one's limbs,
to wrest free and bail out,

to land, rolling,
on the pavement,

to rise, wounded,
and walk again.

Marjorie Saiser is the author of a two books, Bones of a Very Fine Hand and Lost in Seward County, both published by Backwaters Press. She has also released a chapbook, Moving On (Lone Willow P).


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