Hostage, by Ann Dernier

Woman-Ochre, by Willem de Kooning (USA, b. Netherlands). 1955?

​Hostage

   Like Woman-Ochre, 1955
                        cut       from her frame                                   
            then ignored   
                                   
 
                                    just another hostage
                        left to hang                              laundry
                                                            left back                                  of the bedroom door.
 
 
                                                                                    Her hair swept            up
                        her                   throat slashed    with shadow
      her thighs                                                  bloodied.
           
 
 Those brutal hands                reaching for her.
                                    De Kooning,                 her first           ransomer,
                                                                                    then passed     among them.   
 
 
                        Even the museum questions her.
                                                After more than 30 years,    we are not          so        sure.
Is she armed?                                      Was she always          winged &             masked?
 
 
                                                            Is that              a metal                         cod piece,
                                     a raised sword,
the red between her                             ample thighs,                           a cape?

Ann Dernier

Ann Dernier is Managing Editor at Kore Press. Her collection, In the Fury (Grey Book Press 2015), was short-listed for the Robert Dana Poetry Prize at Anhinga Press and the Crab Orchard Series First Book Award in Poetry. You can read her poems inBurningword Literary Journal, Poppy Road Review, Autumnal: A Collection of Elegies, Threepenny Review, Weaving the Terrain Anthology: Dos Gatos Press, SWWIM.org, Rumble Fish Quarterly and elsewhere. She received an MFA from the Iowa Writer’s Workshop. More at anndernier.com.