Steve Williams

Apprenticeship

The sculptor’s apprentice presses
cheek to cylinder, savors her breath;
the frequency of cavern water.

His chisel sloughs off dead skin,
discovers serpentine cracks
glutted with grubs and worms.

Steel tempers the inner curve
of her waist, liberates
flakes of regret. Marble

is too thin, room for one breast
half of the other; her collar
bone only suggests a left shoulder.

He exposes the right hip, slims
leg to high, arched foot, brings
left calf in from oblivion

below her imagined knee. Higher,
the sweep of a single arm, fingers
choking a teddy bear.

Rasp, file, polish away the marks
of a grizzly’s tongue, the sound
of snuffling nose searching

for pragmatic places. Sand toes,
give a pedicure, take a pulse
of his own breath. Slowly, he rotates

her torso, frisks her nudity
yet cannot fix her wanting
pieces. He strokes the perfect

perspiration of light, wills blood to seep,
instills liquid amber into fixed eyes.
She whispers, ask my father

yet the sarcophagus remains shut.

The Flow of Silk

Hardwood floor in restored Victorian
gorges on waxen shadow of the window.
A fall of silk lies in the feast,
eclipse of white chocolate burned cold.

He collapses against alabaster wall,
stares at the fabric of his desire,
remembers her façade, glitter mask
and iridescent plumes that defended

her thick eyes. Silk was wrapped
in loose folds and eddies, as if maker
worms came to life around her waist,
under each breast. Her hips swiveled

in spiral ripples, the weave
passed over skin as sweet milk
would curl over barely submerged
stones. One hand beckoned,

the other grasped a dagger, with hilt
crafted of finger-bones, fire-blackened
and twisted. Blade spins his pupils:
contract, expand, react too late.

In words spoken with spaces
between them, she asked:
would
you
bleed?

Her fingers bound his wrist, She unwound
the mind-silk, entwined
his bicep, elbow. Her smooth sweat
slid across his, point

of her knife poised above
his palm. Mask tilted, eyes white, sharp,
her hips swayed in rhythm to the reason
lullaby. Serpents tugged at his body

as razor steel remained, motionless.
He nodded.

Soon, the last inches of passion
were draped around his shoulders.
As he clotted, she stood naked,
blended into pale light of the window.

*
He rises, wakes his sleeping wife.
She rustles down to the kitchen, starts
a kettle of water, flits for supplies.
The water skirls.

She returns, bathes, his wounded hand,
threads a steel needle with red
silk, carefully sews
the gash shut.

Many Shades

They prattle behind my back
fence. The raven is my sun-shadow, I dangle
from open beak—tinfoil lace for its hoard.

Under fowl feet, candle-shadow lies
with my moon-shadow. They copulate
in rhythm with witching flame.

From creosote poles, streetlight-shadows coil
around my feet as petals. Some short
and black, others stretched and gray
as if obscurity is allotted and finite.
They all talk at once and shiver.
I can’t understand any of them.

Telephone-shadow argues with my storm,
Sunset is purple, my sunrise and drizzle
are failures I’ve never seen.

Gossip tones emote from a collection of holes,
I walk guitar wires--eyes in the acoustic cave,
feet on prison bars that own no shadow,
find comfort among the silhouettes.

When she bends over me, I hold the kiss long
enough for each to have their turn.