Snapshot

photo by Saul Leiter

Sometimes I long 
to know less 
of a thing 

To catch hold 
of an outline 
and have it 
draw me in, 

while still pulling
slightly
away

Once

Take my hand, let's plunge 
into woods, dart between pines
like fairy-tale riffraff
sprung from a cage

Something is lurking, 
Something sees 
Is that why the rocks are so rigid and straight?
Why else should we stick 
like words to our page?

What if, instead, you let go
of my hand
and pushed me, ungently,
into a lake? 

What if I laughed
instead of getting mad,
slime on my head
a fish up the leg?  

Impossible to live
like orphans, you say, 
but it's spring 
and I'm drunk 
and I want to 
be nuts 

The clock says I've lived
but half of this life 

I want to get wet,
be charged with a quest,
kiss your hot neck— 

storm the castle

make off with the lamb 

Francesca

© Francesca Woodman

As if volcanoes 
were born
to make art
of the lava

You, Francesca,
a human
person

Young. Naked.
Even in dresses.
Needful as
the living dawn.

Young. Dead
by the time
that I turned
five. 

Francesca Woodman,
a suicide 
a great 

crawling 
prostrated
obscured
in full daylight 

laughing silently
through
your lens

with a slippery, feral, 
unnatural intent. 

Gaze made 
of marble, 
Body ether

I bet you thought gravity 
would bend.

Baby-girl voice.
Varicose ambitions.
Your mother, the ceramicist,
didn't quite get you,
did she  

But your father, the painter,
let go of his canvas
chasing you through
the halls of your pictures,
to be trapped like Escher
in the mind of your eye

Francesca —

Italia. 

Woodman —

New England.

How uncanny your black,
how holy your linens

But you — 
you are still the something
Other. 
You ghost.
You specter.
You witchy shapeshifter.  

Francesca: 
Girl eternal.

Francesca.
22 years old when the body
struck pavement.  

Francesca. 
Wallpapered in 
to the seam 
of your story. 
Lacquered.
Canonized.  
Ethereal angel.  

And so.
But then.

You got what
you wanted.

Francesca, 
Francesca—
what a price.  

© Francesca Woodman