Carol Frith

Ordinary Observations


She is the recipient of the world's text,
a hybrid nude: black characters on pink ground,
a flush right hand and a rush of florid words.

Ordinary observations will suffice. The nude
woman is always a miscue, a misorientation,
always the recipient of the world's text.

We absolutely need no help in understanding
this. The woman denies herself, jostling script,
her flush right hand releasing the florid words

that define her pelvis, that outline her esophagus:
changed, record, said. Barriers, I would say,
even though she is the figure & ground of this text,

sacrifice and surface. Her treated body is an impure
recitation on a foxing, mildewed page—
bright, flush words and an inconsistent right hand

reaching past vowels and consonants, scrambling
the skin's naked and unsteady punctuations.
She is the recipient of the world's text, a flush
right hand jumbling an oh-so-florid rush of words.