Muse Muse Muse
1. Georgia O”Keeffe in “Georgia Young, Georgia Old”
Because her lips
look as if what she says
will allow you,
and her eyes say
you can fall into,
drift up from,
and into her again,
because her body says,
she couldn’t be just anyone--
those famous hands holding the robe
(closed?)(open?)
take your eyes off her eyes,
and she allows you
without giving in.
2. Tina Modotti in “Muse Muse”
Eleven faces
and one odalisque,
the pose sylph-like
and self-absorbed,
certainly not looking to beguile--
turning her focus
on herself,
a breathing lens,
one finger
about to click the shutter
of her third eye
3. Muse Muse Muse
So when the woman artist draws portraits
of other women artists,
arranging them again in poses
invented by their male lovers,
the woman poet asks
what power is duplicated then
in image after image?
The woman poet asks
if the artist
has never been with a woman,
how does she frame
what to look at
but by borrowing desire?
And what if desire duplicated
duplicates desire, determines itself
no matter how it’s seen or by whom?
What if the shadow in this case
throws the figure
and not the other way around?
–Eloise Klein Healy
This poem first appeared in Eloise Klein Healy's book, Passing.