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.