Nude, by Sarah Nichols

Self Portrait with Patricia Preece, by Stanley Spencer (UK), 1937.

Nude

The questions you ask
are too intimate.

When did you lose
your virginity

Why did you
have the hysterectomy

As if you could get to
me through losses.

Your fingers,

aching 
for the canvas of my body

in a pitiless light
that cannot reimagine itself

into tenderness. 

Sarah Nichols

Previously published in the chapbook The Country of No (Finishing Line Press, 2012). 

Sarah Nichols is a co-editor of Thank You for Swallowing, an online journal of feminist protest poetry. She is  the author of three chapbooks, including She May Be a Saint (Hermeneutic Chaos Press, 2016), and Edie (Whispering): Poems from Grey Gardens (Dancing Girl Press, 2015). Her work has also appeared in Yellow Chair Review, Rogue Agent, and Noble/Gas Qtrly.