EKPHRASIS AT THE FOOT OF KARA WALKER’S FOUNTAIN
by Beatrix Liv Delcarmen
someone spit up a woman
a yellowing thing, a wet stone bed
of shipwreck & colony spit.
a holy fountain. this museum is a cage.
one girl at the bottom of the water weeps
locks of hair.
there are no coins in this fountain
& I don’t see reflection, just shadow.
the woman is a labor of desire,
a soul is trapped in plastic-detachment of money.
the woman has been shot in the neck,
this is not an endpoint. a shell fills with boy tears.
there is body all over the place, like shipwreck,
like nationhood.
dear lover, we are still drowning?
when days burn off & long-coated men
with throats for eyes
read us on museum walls,
will our drowning thicken?
the wishes have run out. a girl plays
with the coral growing like handcuffs
& a cupid’s arrow sticks out from her nose.
we are running out of places to nap.
the wings are rotting off & the tongue is white
& the notebooks are all in little glass boxes.
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