Posing in Spider Light
And the prey was me or god, for spider descending.
I could see no one else reflected in the paned glass of the studio door.
Una-chuting from the ceiling, spider might know all about prayer:
The design of our ever-waiting, ever-wanting
To catch another day’s grace
For spinning/spitting a known pattern.
Yet what we net changes us and the web.
We are women, artists and models,
The outer dark and inner flame where we make
Our living and our dying was palpably present.
We were posing for one another, sitting still long enough
For conclusions to be drawn.
As rain spinneted glass nightmusic,
We breathed in the candled shadows
On breasts, thighs, pubic hair—a tangle of webwear.
We were four:
I had come late to the setting, substituting for one
Worn out from the day, who went to dream the night.
She was the oldest of the group, and I the youngest,
And not so young, at that, I took my/her place.
I had swept the studio, as she would have, lit the candles,
Hummed a lullaby with my model family, preparing,
Inviting the artists to dream the waking dream, once more.
And I removed my clothes, took a pose—
Lady in waiting for the making hour.
Poised on a small ladder, I felt opaque
Even though the flames made the hair on my forearms
Grow bright, arc and flare—
My nipples rise softly with the cold night air.
I chose looking away from both families,
Yet feeling them, hearing them, scenting them—
Pencils and chalks moving in and out.
Making sure I didn’t escape, spider poised eye level to me.
How long had she waited for what I could not see?
And now she went to it, past my knee.
Drop by drop, she spun her fall out of some place within.
Deliberately liberating herself from rules that bound me.
Under arachnid skin, did her thighs throb for the joinings
That made joints ache. And when they came, did she eat her mates?
Then egg out hundreds of children like poems, paintings,
Done when delivered? Only to follow that pattern again.
Spider fine, the eight midwives/inceptors drew out of each of us our child:
One more of the hundreds we had conceived, stalked, awaited, bagged, and burrowed—
A seed for future’s consumption.
Tomorrow, we would marry, carry and bury another for future’s need.
I could see no one else reflected in the paned glass of the studio door.
Una-chuting from the ceiling, spider might know all about prayer:
The design of our ever-waiting, ever-wanting
To catch another day’s grace
For spinning/spitting a known pattern.
Yet what we net changes us and the web.
We are women, artists and models,
The outer dark and inner flame where we make
Our living and our dying was palpably present.
We were posing for one another, sitting still long enough
For conclusions to be drawn.
As rain spinneted glass nightmusic,
We breathed in the candled shadows
On breasts, thighs, pubic hair—a tangle of webwear.
We were four:
I had come late to the setting, substituting for one
Worn out from the day, who went to dream the night.
She was the oldest of the group, and I the youngest,
And not so young, at that, I took my/her place.
I had swept the studio, as she would have, lit the candles,
Hummed a lullaby with my model family, preparing,
Inviting the artists to dream the waking dream, once more.
And I removed my clothes, took a pose—
Lady in waiting for the making hour.
Poised on a small ladder, I felt opaque
Even though the flames made the hair on my forearms
Grow bright, arc and flare—
My nipples rise softly with the cold night air.
I chose looking away from both families,
Yet feeling them, hearing them, scenting them—
Pencils and chalks moving in and out.
Making sure I didn’t escape, spider poised eye level to me.
How long had she waited for what I could not see?
And now she went to it, past my knee.
Drop by drop, she spun her fall out of some place within.
Deliberately liberating herself from rules that bound me.
Under arachnid skin, did her thighs throb for the joinings
That made joints ache. And when they came, did she eat her mates?
Then egg out hundreds of children like poems, paintings,
Done when delivered? Only to follow that pattern again.
Spider fine, the eight midwives/inceptors drew out of each of us our child:
One more of the hundreds we had conceived, stalked, awaited, bagged, and burrowed—
A seed for future’s consumption.
Tomorrow, we would marry, carry and bury another for future’s need.