Beauty Strip
Poems
978-1-68003-010-5 Paperback
5.5 x 8.5 x 0.22 in
80 pp.
Pub Date: 01/06/2015
Available
Our Lady of the Mills
The painter dodges the filthy clumps,
despises their chilblained faces,
rabbit-eyes, broken teeth. He eases
into the stone church, the one work
he will give them: the virgin, charcoal-lined,
comfort for the people in their hours
at the furnace and the spools.
With paregoric and tonic bitters,
he endures the church’s stained light,
cold arches, and eye-sockets. Empty,
unpainted, the dreadful ovals will tell
what she felt when she touched her son,
cool and rigid as marble awaiting the chisel,
pale as threadbare muslin, spilt cream.
About the Author
Published by Texas Review Press