Echo by Marcia J. Pradzinski

Discovery, by Rene Magritte, 1928.

 
 
Echo   
 
             ...there is no break between the two substances, and no limit.
                                                                        ~ Rene Magritte
 
Magritte's woman stares as if in a trance --
black hair, red lips, oval face, black almond eyes
held still. Wood-grain strands swim onto her right hip,                     
her midriff, and higher to striate her breast. Mahogany
grain swirls onto her right arm, up the hill of her shoulder,
then drops to engrave her left forearm. Seductive fingers
sliver forward to impregnate her. They graze
her lower lip, evoke a shadowy smile.
                                                  
                                    *
 
I imagine my grandfather, a cabinetmaker,
chiseling design and shape onto slabs
of wood.  Lost in its fragrance, its pliant spirit,
he hums as his tools work their magic. The wood
guides his leathery hands the way stone leads
a sculptor's. He engraves patterns onto edges
of a table, the wood feeding through fingers
no longer his own.

Marcia Pradzinski

Marcia J. Pradzinski, an award-winning poet, lives in Skokie, Illinois. Her poetry has appeared in print journals, anthologies, and online. Her most recent publications have been in Mom Egg Review, The Poetry Storehouse, and RHINO 2015. She has a poem in the Winter/2016 Issue of Blue Heron Review, and another to be featured in the Summer/2016 Issue. Two  poems are forthcoming in The Chronicles of Eve anthology at Paper Swans Press, U.K.  Her first chapbook of poems, Left Behind, was published by Finishing Line Press in December, 2015.