After Picasso's "The Rape"
       

Ribcage, bound in shape
                as if by a stretch of skin from a pig's leg.

The first flies I see in Spain are fat
                plucking. My street, a line of hibiscus drawn in shade.

Trash pools out from the market.
                A woman tossing a soap bucket

whispers there is oil on your face
                when I walk away. I think the mark of somebody.

He holds tiles of bird shit
                in the tower until the bells ring, and to watch the bells ring,

he says, is like seeing a person trust
                their body over a known limit. I have felt

claustrophobic, bent in the mist
                between the river and the Alamillo bridge.

How many times have I fought
                persistence, untangled an olive from its pit.

When we watch the sunset
                someone holds a green spotlight to one of eleven churches,

which stands out like a horn
                among hips. A gather of knuckles and thread dividing cliffs.

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Copyright © 2019 Taneum Bambrick All rights reserved
from West Branch
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission