print previewback DOROTHY CHAN
Composition
2
Because we always need a lover’s trace on us,
we were given the Cupid’s bow.
A friend once asked me where the bow was—
I told her to trace her lips, while thinking of the lover—
red signaling an embrace, where his fingers
tour your lips, face, you breathe into
one another, breaths becoming smoke—
the addiction,
as with Ren Hang’s red-lipped faces exchanging fire
behind a set of large, fertile leaves,
or the way the model bends her back, letting the leaf
drape down her small of her back to her cheeks,
as in Ingres’ violin—the signal beckons
a little song. Let it all end in teardrops:
Richter’s Fuji, its gray residued once all the colors
leave, like the residue on windows after the rain . . .
His lips travel from my Cupid’s bow to the teardrop.