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