Cathy Song’s poem, “Girl
Powdering Her Neck” responds to a portrait of a geisha from one of Kitagawa
Utamaro’s studies of “The Floating World,” or ukiyo-e. Ukiyo-e is a type of
Japanese woodblock print produced between the 17th and 18th
centuries.
sheen of an oyster shell,
sponged with talc and
vapor,
moisture from a bath.
A pair of slippers
are placed outside
the rice-paper doors.
She kneels at a low table
in the room,
her legs folded beneath
her
as she sits on a buckwheat
pillow.
Her hair is black
with hints of red,
the color of seaweed
spread over rocks.
Morning begins the ritual
wheel of the body,
the application of
translucent skins.
She practices pleasure:
applying powder.
Fingerprints of pollen
some other hand will
trace.
The peach-dyed kimono
patterned with maple
leaves
drifting across the silk,
falls from right to left
in a diagonal, revealing
and the curve of a
shoulder
like the slope of a hill
set deep in snow in a
country
of huge white solemn
birds.
Her face appears in the
mirror,
a reflection in a winter
pond,
rising to meet itself.
She dips a corner of her
sleeve
ike a brush into water
to wipe the mirror;
she is about to paint
herself.
The eyes narrow
in a moment of self-scrutiny.
The mouth parts
as if desiring to disturb
the placid plum face;
break the symmetry of
silence.
But the berry-stained
lips,
stenciled into the mask of
beauty,
do not speak.
Two chrysanthemums
touch in the middle of the
lake
and drift apart.
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