Joan Larkin

Nude in the Bath
Bonnard, 1925

Legs, sex, clenched hand.
The rest offstage, unpainted
theater of eyes and mouth,
 
grief and devotion. He, too,
half-visible, a slippered foot
comically breaching flat space.         
 
World tinged lilac.
Flesh, water, porcelain,
light-struck curtain––
 
if this is intimacy it's with
the way life flickers. No                                                        
two breaths the same.
 
Cloth dropped on a chair.      
Neither the moment before
nor the moment after.
 
Light loves and dissolves us.
Stories dissolve. Her life:
painted as water.

Floor Sander Next Door
 
Someone’s gloved hands steer                                               
the heavy body. I hear it
through my naked wall
whining, lurching––grotesque
dance of an angry thing
that cries as it eats. I
seethe as the noise dies down                                                                               
then roars to life again.
My mind writhes in its mouth.
I’m made of it. Dream-     
canceled, smithereened.
Don’t say I asked it in.
Ask what I am when comes     
the dead shock of quiet.

With Chekhov

Dropper filled, he tilted
his face to one side.                           
My mouth stood open,                                                           
baby bird waiting, but
he put the dropper into my hand.
I turned to avoid his eyes.                                                                              
Lifted my tongue, exposed the thin
membrane, squeezed the bulb.
Slow thick taste of oil and herbs 
out of some earth-dark furrow––
no remedy for what killed him young.
Don't swallow. I closed my eyes,       
let it seep into my blood.
I lived for his sudden smile.

Joan Larkin’s sixth book of poems, Old Stranger, is forthcoming from Alice James Books in 2024. Her previous collections include Blue Hanuman and My Body: New and Selected Poems, both from Hanging Loose Press. She has been a lifelong teacher and has received Lambda and Shelley Memorial Awards, among others.