Cathy Song's Gorgeous Poem "Girl Powdering Her Neck"

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 17^th and 18^th centuries.

The light is the inside

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:


Cathy Song

the pressure of three fingertips


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


the nape of her neck


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.