by Ruth Towne
On the bathroom floor, dark clothes over white
tiles. Behind a gold curtain, a plastic one;
translucent, it transmutes the steam that rises
to skylight. The mirror frames my form, waits
for fog. I avert my eyes. A towel for sheepskin,
I model Eve in this bathroom, my private Eden,
embarrassed by my own breasts. A shower scene
in impressionist style: I look through my nudity
not at it, distort what form I recognize in outline
of pelvic bone or line of shoulder to shoulder
art unattainable. Unclean, unclean, unclean, calls
the water stream. Penitence—in my confessional,
the porcelain walls force a certain discourse, exact
from the body a holiness the body cannot bare.
Honey, or the synthetic scent of something sweet,
in humid air drifts. Just once, couldn’t I be Venus
with her distant stare? Our emotional reticence
presents as emptiness. Gentle as it is, my gentle
conditioner teases my eyes, but no tears. I stand
in the half-shell of my tub, face to the porcelain,
place the spout to my back. Between what’s in,
what’s out, one strikes a careful balance. Conditioner
retreats with shampoo, coils the drain eventually.
I share the sin of all women: nudity signifies divinity.
If I approve my bare reflection, I cast own idol.
Here acceptance, my own golden calf, grows
from what I am willing to sacrifice, my modesty,
an heirloom from my mother and her mother too.
I melt it down in this crucible, my comfort rises
as dross. I, the idolater, know the price exacted
of the one who tolerates her own bare body: in a cup
she receives back that acceptance ground to powder.
Punished, she drinks until that cup is clean, clean,
clean. Long light lavender strokes conceal blank body.
No artist paints me. I paint myself. The canvas lays
stiff, a corpse, but the mirror remains ever animate.
Nudity demands divinity not dignity. Venus uncovers
her other bare breast to wave a hand at the emperor
who commissioned the scene. He stands clothed
in invisible robes. I bend to shave my legs, imitate
the upright shave’s unstable pose, propaganda’s flat
affect. Adolescent, I am a girl unprepared for razor.
It carves long red lines behind the crease of my knee
and into my shin. Still, the razor cuts me. Naked,
I bleed and bleed. I am oil and acrylic on fabric,
I am marble, and I am a feeble old woman, who prays
not to fall in her shower, not to die, unclothed, alone.
Clean, I emerge and swaddle myself in cotton to dry.
Ruth Towne is a graduate of the Stonecoast MFA program. Her poetry has recently appeared in Grim & Gilded, Plainsongs Poetry Magazine, New Feathers Anthology, The Orchard Poetry Review, The Decadent Review, Inlandia Literary Journal, and Beyond Words Literary Magazine. She has a forthcoming publication in Mantis Poetry Journal. She hopes someday to become a respected gardener.