A Model Prisoner
“Next,” she says,
Flaccid muscles snap to attention.
Bones grind and creak.
A numb gluteus stirs in protest,
Pinpricks dance across the spheroid cheek.
An heroic pose this time:
Left foot forward,
Right foot poised and flexed,
Arms wind-milling backward,
Head and chest parallel to floor,
Palm cupped about an unseen disk.
On all sides, charcoal flies,
Capturing my stricken silhouette,
Preserving the re-born Discobulus from every angle.
“Hurry,” my quivering shoulder cries,
“I cannot hold.”
“Change,” she says.
Now I am Ulysses, hot-blooded Greek,
Prepared to hurl my awful bronzed lance.
I’ll make some Trojan stalwart twitch,
Penetrated through his armored chest.
“Take a closer look at his physique—“
The voice abruptly halts my minds advance,
Reminds me that I stand without a stitch
To be reproduced on palimpsest.
“Notice scapula articulation—”
A tap upon my naked upper back—
“Observe the rectus muscle here,
Across his thigh,
The definition of the patella.”
She gives my bended knee a gentle flick,
Fingers trailing down my bare leg.
Her touch is not as subtle as it was last night
When we made our own history.
I steel myself
To remain in control of my body.
Art students gaze up wordlessly,
Eyes wide, mouths hanging slack,
Nostrils dilated in concentration,
Fingers itching to attack.
“Next,” she says.
I stretch and shift my stance,
Stabilize another classic pose.
Number twenty-six in the model’s repertoire:
Pompeiian watchman, leaning on upright staff.
He stares at Vesuvius’ molten maw
Where incandescent magma leaps,
Resigned to being pumiced for eternity.
The students, mostly female,
All straddle wooden horses
With upright easels where their mounts’ heads would be.
They wheel about me,
Forward, back, as though on parade,
Searching for perfect perspective.
By turns, each glances up
To squint along a thumb,
Winking one eye shut to help the view.
As I posture on the pedestal,
I oversee the fledgling works of art,
Discovering that perception and interpretation
Are still many miles apart.
Here, one has sketched me as young Apollo
With bulging pectorals deeply etched
Like firm, ripe breasts.
She’s given me colossal legs,
Sinewy arms to grace a Hercules
And a phallus any bull would envy.
There, an immature Rembrandt
Has deformed me, defamed me
With sagging flesh.
He’s elongated a modest nose,
Receded a cleft chin,
Pipe-stemmed my limbs,
And reduced my manhood to insignificance.
The artist’s prerogative, I suppose,
But how can both be so wrong?
“Next,” she says.
The imaginary spear is in my hands again,
Parrying a lethal blow
In battle upon the plain of Marathon.
The dream shatters when a pretty girl
With platinum-dusted mane
Rolls forward, hungry for more intimate details.
Directly below the stand she pauses,
So close I could impale her with my shaft.
Blue eyes as wide and fresh
As morning glories imprison mine,
Then drop to fix beside the chalk-dusted spot
Where I have indiscreetly scratched an itch.
A tongue, circumscribed by lips,
Licks the air then disappears.
She smiles seductively at me, the bitch!
She bends to sketch.
At her V-neck, bra-less breasts form a shadowy valley.
A pink nipple winks into sight.
Her blackened fingers move sure and slow.
“Change,” the teacher says.
Gratefully, I turn my back,
Sink into a restful, pensive slump,
Chin balanced on one palm,
An arm drooped artlessly.
The girl will not let me escape so easily.
Her widespread legs, bisected by the board she rides,
Walk the mobile easel to a new position.
She relocates directly in my line of sight,
Where I cannot help but watch
As she delineates the contours of my crotch.
She’s good, precise.
But not so nice.
Her charcoal quickly replicates my flanks,
Coaxes shape from two dimensions,
And teases the paper to life.
“Next,” the teacher says.
I stand again,
Invisible bow drawn taut,
Ready to let fly.
The girl below me flips the sheet,
Moves again and refocuses her aim.
Frantically, my brain reels back
Across the centuries.
Beneath my feet, no longer merely padded wood,
But sand upon a distant shore.
The unsettling silence metamorphoses to a battle roar.
Look! There is proud Helen on the ramparts,
Golden-crowned, watching with the Trojan throng
The ebb and flow of mortal combat far below.
Pale arms akimbo, elbows on the parapet,
Frame the brazen treasure stolen by desire:
The milk-white mounds that fed this fateful fire,
The scarlet tips that sank a thousand ships
Beneath the wine-dark sea.
And though, I too, may succumb
To those swollen charms,
I shall not sink. Not me.
“Next,” the teacher says.
Before Blondie turns the page,
I see the bow has been ignored,
But my arrow is in full flight.
Drawn rigid, twice life-size,
It’s an awe-inspiring weapon
In throbbing black and white.
I quickly squat, recline upon my side,
Languid-limbed, but with flesh aflame
And only my thin wrist, cocked awkwardly,
To conceal incipient shame.
Still my nemesis pursues.
I feel her warm breath on my cold toes.
I hear the hoarse rasp her charcoal makes
Upon coarse paper.
I envision fleshy forms swelling
Beneath her facile fingers.
Don’t think! I plead,
Rummaging through the past for a proper place,
A more respectable time to occupy my mind.
Don’t imagine!
But my brain, trapped in the present,
Refuses to heed the warning and shuffles snapshots.
There’s a flash of naked Eve,
Spreading herself wide for me.
Here’s Lady Godiva astride a stallion.
Marie Antoinette, in powdered wig
And nothing else.
A hot message races across twitching neurons:
An urgent call for more blood,
And even more so,
In the lower torso.
In response, a flash flood,
A torrid torrent rises in my humid loins.
Then, unbidden, comes the word I dread:
A single syllable of dual import.
“Change,” she says.