The Flayed Man / And You Stop in a Stranger's Field in 1542
Art by Jeff Scott Lane
Poetry by Elizabeth Atherton
You ask for directions. You stand in the broth-colored hill, being told:
This is how you go.
The soughing in the grasses. At once
the company of the farmer is erotic. It is the eroticism
of the old friend’s silhouette bumping up the path
high in the new place.
In the diagram, the man’s hand folds
on the wand of the dagger. The sporty fond lean
of the man, the operator of the human device.
Muscles marked with the letters of talk
like the little air dropped from a flute.
Blue egg down in the nest.
Hearing from the farmer.
You see him in wonder.
He thinks you have not understood. Tenderly
he says it again, pointing.