Lucy

“The Weeping Woman”

Pablo Picasso

She has salamanders sleeping in each of her eyes.

Sewn of twigs and tortillas and torture, she’s

Dressed in a bulletproof vest and strips of cellophane.

She cries tears of petrified teak,

Treats for the buzzing fruit flies 

That kiss the swathe of scars

On her troubled cheeks,

Smearing rouge like blood with a

Single stroke of gossamer wings.

She chews her fingernails down to the stem.

Green with envy, a chili pepper hothead,

Brawling with bullfighters.

Feed her ambrosia til she’s burning,

An ill, glassy eyed child.

Her soul stomps, a trumpeting elephant

Stampeding a poaching party.

Cosmic cavemen murmur her name

And stitch it into the stars.