The Picture of a Man

She scratches a faint beard,

Sinew and smoke against a wall of cinderblock,

Casting her nets for a ride to work in the dust of a gravel lot,

Calling on the picture of a man.

The grizzled gentlemen and loafered princes

Who, she will tell me, light up her phone late at night,

Hustle past without spilling a word in the dying purple light,

Just like the picture of a man.

On a sun-bleached couch in a dusty cramped apartment,

You’ll stroke my straining neck, your eyes flashing blue.

And the things he did I’ve hardly told myself I will sit and tell to you.

But what is the picture of a man?

You’ll draw out the barbed years, working open

My clenched bony throat till his fists start to lose their hold.

And maybe some shining morning, I’ll pray for peace on his soul,

But what is the picture of a man?

Tell me, what is the picture of a man?

I still believe, children, in some kind of warm, forgiving light

That bears us away from our worn-out bodies and this wartorn life.

And, I don’t know, but if anybody in this world just fades to black,

I’d think it’s the man that lives off picking on them that are being held back.

The lunchroom simmers just above silence,

Every face buried in the school paper, which we seldom read.

His proclamation blooms through the black-and-white photocopied sheet,

Like burning petals on the picture of a man.

The blood rushes into my cheeks.

I quake before him, so bare, bold, reconciled.

My ugly words rush back, taking shape as the work of a child

Desperate to hide in the picture of a man.

I flood with the shame of a hateful child

Beaten down by the picture of a man.

I plead guilty as that brutal child,

So bound by the picture of a man.

How do I do right by that terrified child,

So lost in the picture of a man?

So lost in the picture of a man?

So lost in the picture of a man?