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ARTIST/MODEL T.D. WALKER

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                    1. The Model as Heroine, 1931

 

Here, he'd said and nodded after she'd arrived, late

morning light filtering into his studio, the door

 

propped open.  Here, he'd said, pointing his stained

finger at the closet she could change in.  She'd known

 

where to go—she'd been here before.  Had he not

remembered her or had the light changed her or had the weeks?

 

Here, he'd said, after she'd emerged in the pale blue gown,

moving her into place behind the model man, the ranger

 

or the captain or the scientist she'd hide behind, here.

How many times had she worn this particular 

 

dress?  How many times had she stood behind 

him, not him, but some form a body made?  Here,

 

she sees the model man is an officer from no ship

they could retreat to, and she is the world he protects.

 

He presses her back, away, toward safety.  She is a whole

planet, fluid and blue.  She is the world, and she is holding up

 

the world with its people unaware of his hands on her 

body.  Its people, who she was this morning, drinking weak coffee.  

 

Its people, who she was last night, staring up, sleepless, her ceiling

warning her that there are stars, but she won't see them.  Its people

 

who she was days and days ago, back here in a pink dress,

a white dress, a yellow dress, buckling her sandal, wondering

 

where, once again, he'd put her.

 

 

2. The Artist, 1931

 

 

One last time, just this 

once— 

 

Of course, I'd need him

dressed as a captain.  I need 

to paint a captain.  The story 

always ends with the captain 

saving the ship, the planet,

the ones cowering behind him--  

        never himself.

 

3. The Model as the Alien Queen, 1931

 

Later, they'll figure out we were the same

woman.  The face he'd paid too much

attention to, painted too near to life.  As if

the artist tried not to see the heroine

staring at my ray-gun rigged up, 

dangling from the space where I'll be.  Her

fear not fear enough, not yet.  The captain

throwing himself into the ray-gun's beam: 

how many times have we heard this story?

She'll go home, the model, the straps

from the blue dress still holding her 

shoulders down as if something were drowning 

her.  There is too much neatness to my life.

I'll die from a battle blow.  The captain's

defense too late to save him from my last shot.

She'll be left here, the heroine, abandoned on this

moon, unable to contact the world she left, unable

to decide whose body she should weep for.

 

4. Aboard the Gen Ship, 2131

 

He'll read the image 

of the words, over

and over, her son, the next 

 

generation born here

aboard this ship.

How strange to be

 

an explorer with nowhere

to go except down 

the hall, into the archive.

 

After he's read the stories

too many times the ship

will help him recall 

 

the count.  After she'd read

those digitised pages, her

fingers nearly smooth

 

with imagined ink, she'd

told herself how 

she would have stood, 

 

were she the captain.

How she would have

stood on the world 

 

she will never see herself.

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