Reclining Figure II, Frank Auerbach


Crusts

I fear my flesh because
thick words
pulsate in me, out of me,
choke the air with their self-important limbs
and breed thin peaches for voices.

I starve my body,
leave it soaking in its skin,

skin that wraps,
not reaching in
between- where roots soften and wither
into drizzling yellows-

skin that puts streams to sleep,
so that colors and joints shut silent.
skin that does not stretch past our stitched vision,
that never breaks from the bone.

It crumbles, capturing shadows into its pores.

But, when I
inhale down the roasted brown of my eyes
and hum with my sleeping thighs,
our breaths reassure me,
as they wrap me in their tender meat
and spill at my dense corners,
that I
am not carved.