Six-Small-Poems-by-Karen-Holden -3

Young Girl, 1915 by Alexej Jawlensky. © 2018 Long Beach Museum of Art.
79-1.5; Young Girl, 1915 by Alexej Jawlensky. Collection of the Long Beach Museum of Art, Long Beach, California, gift of The Milton Wichner Collection Bequest, 1979. Photograph © 2018 Long Beach Museum of Art.


 

Young Girl, 1915
        by Karen Holden
  
There are eyes upside down
behind my mouth, another brow
beneath my chin. We are all like this:
who we are painted over who we were

Speech silenced, dead to smell
they could not take away our eyes
those reflecting pools in our faces:
            dark mud, red blood, blue sky

Or those curtained, but open still, inside

 

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