Mirror Neurons
after Toulouse Lautrec’s La Toilette
Even though you don’t face the painter
he captures your face.
Heraclitus asked, how can you hide
from what never goes away?
Tense shoulders, despair of
the haphazardly half-dressed.
Somehow you blend with your dresses,
keeping the hardness of the chairs
separate. When a woman tries
to blend like softness
it’s because she has none
of her own or she has to work harder for it.
You forget the steel water bin
that matches your skin,
your knee-high stockings,
bright-black, chronicling memories of
fighting against
cold floors, numb feet, heated cheeks.
I know that pose—something to do with having
a backbone that bends not breaks,
not facing it to face it,
looking away to look straight. You’ve read
H, you know the truth. Salty
brushstrokes, filtered lens,
to face the intimate, you create distance.
What do we see in you that seared,
melted a ring on the hardwood beneath?
Our mirror neurons fire, won’t let you be
anything other.
***
Unity of Opposites
We’ve passed a lot of sad gas station slot
machines. At best I can say, I haven’t
stopped to play. I’m afraid if I do, my mirror
neurons will fire like sparklers,
like rows & rows of dinging sevens
& cherries. No turning back then,
even as you say, just once more. I once
watched a man hopping an extension ladder,
laughing at each jarred landing & fracture,
& wanted to try. Ladders with rubber
soles are best, I was told. In below zero
temperatures I watch my husky digging face
into snow, such joy in his paws but I buddle
with gloves & hat, scarf-wrapped.
Yes, someone else’s is still someone else’s,
& there’s no more to say about that,
except for our willingness
to suspend belief of want versus
need, a missing link between
desire & end result, the thing & the word
that represents, like the worry
we will be murdered by serial killers when
it’s 12 times more likely we will be strangled
by the lovers sleeping next to us.
***
Nocturne with Flame
The night means dream to wake, the night means
stop. It means space heater & Jedi snuggie,
soft glow of constellation lampshades. A bed
with three distinct body dips, husky at end.
What about the end makes us enter it alone?
The night means I might not see the pawprints,
how one back leg drags in snow like an exclamation
point or a blessing. The night
means lavender unicorn hair trailing
from wool socks as I walk. Night means grave
magic. Unable to snip those yarn tails, I offer nothing
except myself. I know my offering
is nothing new, so many use the night to hide
from sunlit hours. To bribe. With only four true emotions,
how can we burn out for the count so quickly?
The night means blinds closed tight, the night means
lock in to let go. The night means skin scrubbed clean,
night means bug zappers & zombie blues.
The night means an unknown slouching towards us,
the night means stop. But that is a lie
that guts my lover as if a wax dissection model.
The night should mean more than partially alive, I know,
should be more than a partial savior.
So, Night, tell me how to enter you
as flame not cinder, as more than ash & fume.
***
Aubade with Leftover Snow
“Will it be salt or late light that it melts like?” ― Carl Phillips
It’s just a dark garage, you said,
just emptiness.
Car doors ajar, boxes
& bike spokes, my presence.
Since when did we need to be
filled by movement
to be filled? Lightbulb reflecting
leftover snow, screen door
letting in cold. Every step
away is the loss of a memory.
Every morning I wake
a step away. Steps slick & grit, ice
& road salt. How to hold on to
is the question, when all we seem to do
is melt the holding through
& through & through.
Light, feet, even leaves sink.
With snow, you can
feel the difference, the crunch of
pressing down on oneself
versus the already pressed down.
Donne said, let us melt & make no noise.
We’re talking to our ancestors again.
Like salt, I’ve decided, my friend,
your name someone once said must be
a serial killer’s name. I’ve decided
it melts bitter & lasting like salt, not light,
light without an aftertaste
as if it never was.
***
Ode to Mayo Jars
Who knew we shared so much with mayonnaise besides
the scrape of dull knives, spit, & messy pits—
what if I said, live by your mayo’s instructions:
keep cool but do not freeze. Tell me, would you keep,
knowing they say need is a four-letter
word. Would you keep, knowing they believe need
is kin to shame. Would you keep,
knowing shame is a bruising wrist, tightening
& retightening the lid. What if
the London Monster pokes your ass with a hatpin,
if the two wolves inside you are fighting,
if you sleep past your sell-by date?
Lao Tzu said, when you let go of who you are, you become
who you might be. Not meant to. Will you keep,
knowing they believe fear is kin to freezing,
a vacuum-sealed guardrail. Could you keep believing
fail is a four-letter word. Tell me, will you lean
into sharp points or housecoat yourself
in bubble wrap, ping-ponging without cut
around every softened curve
*****
Kara Dorris is the author of Have Ruin, Will Travel (Finishing Line Press, 2019) and When the Body is a Guardrail (2020). She has also published five chapbooks: Elective Affinities (dancing girl press, 2011), Night Ride Home (Finishing Line Press, 2012), Sonnets from Vada’s Beauty Parlor & Chainsaw Repair (dancing girl press, 2018), Untitled Film Still Museum (CW Books, 2019), and Carnival Bound [or please unwrap me] co-written with Gwendolyn Paradice (The Cupboard Pamphlet, 2020). Her poetry has appeared in Prairie Schooner, DIAGRAM, I-70 Review, Rising Phoenix, Harpur Palate, Cutbank, Hayden Ferry Review, Tinderbox, Puerto del Sol, The Tulane Review, and Crazyhorse, among others literary journals, as well as the anthology Beauty is a Verb (Cinco Puntos Press, 2011). Her prose has appeared in Wordgathering, Breath and Shadow, Waxwing, and the anthology The Right Way to be Crippled and Naked (Cinco Puntos Press, 2016). Currently, she is a visiting assistant professor of English at Illinois College. For more information, please visit karadorris.com.
