Archipenko, by Stephanie Yue Duhem

Silhouette Geometrique, by Alexander Archipenko (Ukraine) 1913

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archipenko
 
“inverted grandfather                                             
clock, with pestle”
should’ve been the title
of this archipenko sculpture.
 
he understood 
the precarious surgery
of dislocating bodies 
like his own, 
a russian in paris--
the not-quite-right-ness 
of foreign air on skin, 
or of thin-boned foot 
above foreign stone.
 
and he saw too
the blue-green patina of time,
mirroring it in his sculpture--
 
time as skin. 
what passes,
what doesn’t,
what wears, 
and what is worn.
 
-
 
in truth, the title was
“geometric silhouette.”
 
a mild moniker 
for the wild thing winding
through the colonic vats 

of his casts and molds.

Stephanie Yue Duhem

Stephanie Yue Duhem is a 1.5 generation Chinese-American poet and educator. Her work appears in PANK, Glass, Lunch Ticket, and other journals. She was a winner of Red Wheelbarrow's 2018 contest, judged by Naomi Shihab Nye. She can be found online @nameandnoun or at www.sydpoetry.com.  ​