Pygmalion
by Megan Gower
Your hands dig me
Out of my tomb of ivory,
Carve the mark of my eyes,
open so the whites are white and
Guileless, onlooking, sand down
The apple of my hips, chisel
The dips of my back, every stroke by
Calloused hands, those yellowed
And aching hands, those coarse and
Clawing, cloying hands that wrench
Me into unmovingness. I’m made
More perfect by the cold, skin
Unknown to blemish but by the
Weathering of your running hands,
The wearing of your knobby hands
Only a man’s gaze to awaken me
To praise the pure expanse of
My impassive beauty, to linger
On the sheen of my jaw and my
Roman-column neck, earthly-globen
Breasts, the way I gleam under summer
Sun or by cavernous torchlight.
How your eyes frighten me, lingering
And you finger every mountain
Every cavity, wish me awake, fervently
Pray I would take to your breath
Step down from the dais and down
To your feet, plead Aphrodite make
Me soften and melt at your body
But if heat came to me, it would come
First to my legs, like fire, and burn
All at once, and I would roil and churn
And I would run, I would run, I would run.
This poem first appeared in The Greensboro Review.
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