You sit in your portrait
seemingly pleased,
talking aside but like your cheek knows
there is a man
looking with a lens.

Your dress looks like silk, eaten up
by orange holes at your breast, your waist,
your thigh, and pretty.
Your fingers are long and they speak
louder than you do,
a foot before your face.

I am surprised that it is clearly
1960-something,
I see the years in your hair,
the turn of your ankle and your legs
neatly crossed,
the way you brushed it, your
exterior décor,
you look nice.

Not sure if you wanted to be heard
or seen by me.
I prefer the artist to the art, always have,
the stories of their lives
and how and how face-on they faced
their final deaths.
You teased yours out
like a fine curl of hair made straight:
not possible, and yet, inevitable,
with enough work. The work of years.
It was a mask, or all of it, a masque.
It was those hands with nails,
hair in your hands,
dress smoothed on,
torn off, shoes so lovely.
It was all you gave time to, all your days
nailed to the year with photographs
and words.
You bade and made us listen
and we did,
and then did not,
and then could not but.

 

Copyright © Tamara Fulcher, 2007.

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Tamara Fulcher’s poetry has appeared in a variety of magazines and was awarded the Poetry Society’s Geoffrey Dearmer Prize for 2006. Shearsman Books publish her first collection The Recreation of Night in February 2008.