I Think I Will Die, by Jane McPhetres Johnson

The Vitruvian Man, by Leonardo da Vinci (Italy) 1490

I Think I Will Die
​
splayed out in sepia on a cool sheet
where toes and fingertips barely meet
da Vinci’s square as if they’re made to fit  
where overlapped corners overreach rim
of  transparent circle revised by him
to hold my four arms and four legs in
Vishnu dancing limbs of pose-ability
inked without error though contrarily
by his sure left hand proportionately
 
the palm measured with the fingers all 
counted ear to ear, knee to ankle, clavicle 
to crown in this tower of blocks I own
so the children can play with my bones
build bridges, towns, knock them down in
symmetry Vitruvius found astounding
the polymath Leonardo made exquisite
with the sharp point of his compass at
the center of a male body of no renown 
by moving it from umbilical knot on down
 
to crux, apex, root, or a fuss between legs
and sharp angles ending at the felt edge
as by mime confined to imaginary cell
or wingtips and wide skirts by snow-angel 
leaving vacant the half-moon overhead gap
so that elbows can bend into perfect wrap
for a square box sized to fit a round skull
whose contents refuse this Vitruvian rule
dying to puncture my shell’s demarcation 
to see in such constellations consolation.

Jane McPhetres Johnson

Jane McPhetres Johnson grew up in Colorado and commuted from Wyoming to Vermont’s Goddard College MFA. Her poems have been selected for local journals Straw Dogs, Picaflor Press, and Florence Poets Society, and for national e-journals and collections What Rough Beast, The Coil, and Not My President. In November 2020 she published Maven Reaches Mars: Home Poems and Space Probes in Four Fascicles. Jane lives in Amherst cohousing, is followed by fellow activists near and far on facebook and instagram, and follows her Kansan grandmother, who knew Emily’s poems by heart.