after Dior’s John Galliano
“we became dedicated to
the endless task of forcing its secret, of exacting the truest confessions from
a shadow.”
~Michel Foucault
a swathe billows copper sexuality and alliance,
exposing both greave and cuise. Bronze
plate armours her leg. A pair of
bodies drawn around her. A
drawn cuise or copper. The terms of war bedded in fictitious sex,
gauntlet and bracer gear her arm. Arm
her. Jihad visor and bead helm. Bellows camber. Spectacle of power: grey knife-point heels
and bronzed greave. Jeanne d’Arc. Her sex an iridescent shadow betrays a cherry
doublet. Copper spills backward, pillowing
air. A tracery of gold embroidery, blue
jewels. An economy of pleasure,
helmed in feathered bronze. God-like,
tattooed in gold, her false beard black.
Georgettes her. Fictitious
corset. Pleasure veiled in a film of
light, in latex, in Murano beads, she unbinds sex, arms herself in it, draws a
line of black over her eyes – that austere monarchy of sex.
After Jun Takahashi—Summer 2006
~Sappho
candled darkness, a lit space in which women
mutable bodies, drift against black
*
ghosting exposure over water
beneath voile, wan bodies
*
light, their own
ground of exposure or lake, umber vanishment
*
voile tunics them
a luster, exaggerates them
*
veiled muliebral bodies
opening breast and abdomen to light
*
breasts as luster written upon white
the motion of light on her
face
*
metalled and tattooed so we
transparent, bodied there
*
candled exposure bodying metal fire
Of gold against night and ground
*
lake drifts as shadow, vanishes
dusk’s restraint
*
lanterned bodies, mutability scorning erasure
enveiled motion
*
metal coronets her, binds
her face
*
delineation in silver
translucent body drifts
*
tipping into white
lanterned, a null light: we
live […] the opposite […] of daring
after Jun Takahashi
A sheen of gray, oil on a rifle barrel. Leather insinuates menace.
Or desire. A week of numbered days.
She is faceless (first day). A mask obscures the text.
Scrolled stems lattice the door (second day): the metalled floor vanishes. In its place, two rows of iron nails stud the wood.
Her hand grazes its surface (third day). A gap of doubt surrounding her fingers.
The artist abandons her to a single tone (fourth day). Her skin entirely obscured.
She gazes without expression into a pall of crushed light (fifth day). The artist hiding in the wings.
A sheen of water on bare skin (sixth day). Hers. An agency of isolation.
Out of the dark wings (last day): lustrous, a single oily tone responds by vanishing. She performs such flight in silence.
sequestered against
exile
light
a reci-
tation of violence
the Ministry
as against dark
emptied of virtue
an empty room
we don’t
this is
liberation
do women
a kind in fear
honor
shuttering terror
we have no
forensic
authorities
daughters
a discourse in war
reports of
kidnapping
or venacular ::
rape
empties
any policy
patria potestas
elopement
no difference in
kind
terror writes
absence
father and uncles
we don’t
into the code
forbidden
territory night
any
mechanism of power
do women
sex
we don’t
permission
of war
sequester them
(daughters
entangled apparatus
the same
violence
in kind
washes the
veil another
scandal
shroud
forensic
the
limit of compassion
emptied
they
a kind in
absence
we don’t
definition by exclusion