Value Study 

I was leaning against the slanted roof 

in Mary’s attic, holding a posture

as the painter studied, with pen, my form

approaching nakedness. I ask if some

trace of the subject, some scrap of will or 

intention survives in spite of the hand 

that authors. (I used to seek “forever.”) 

“Yes” or “No,” she couldn’t say, and didn’t 

make a case for both or counter, instead 

worked out the architecture of the throat,

scratching leisured lines. Feather-light, the ink.

Questions are troublesome—their getting in 

the way of seeing. I didn’t notice

the pale throat in her sketchbook appearing 

to perform inhalation or speech. Later, 

in the gallery with the new figures,

I was trying to destroy the image 

through the sheer force of concentration,

but the stretched canvas didn't budge, the throat

kept pulsing.         There are instances—

writing the essay, counting the dial tones,

patching holes in drywall near a ceiling—

when the whole of your life extends before 

you like a line unbroken by any 

page—accurate, inexorable, flat—

the decisions made, the shame. Belief seems 

to pour from you. Was it always this way?

The lines of the gallery slanting towards 

convergence at two distant unseen points. 

It could’ve been so simple. & it was 

so simple.