Woman Laying on Her Right Cheek, by Lee Stockdale

Gwion Gwion Figures, Bradshaw rock paintings in the Kimberley region of Western Australia, taken at a site off Kalumburu Road near the King Edward River, Western Australia, 10 000 BC. TimJN1, CC BY-SA 2.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

Woman Laying on Her Right Cheek
 
1.
The artist ostensibly paints four figures,
serviceably capturing their energy and dress. 
The figures on the left are ballerinas,
dancing their feet with synchronized poise.
The character waving her arm in the air
will at any second bring it down,
or raise the other and join it in praise.
 
2.
The whole of the stone is a perfect head.
The rock crevice serves as the crease of her neck.
A dancer is her ribboned forehead
and the arm-raised figure the woman’s smile.
Her eyes are created by the inside dancer,
as her eyebrow, in silence, sweetly appeals:
When will you stop painting and come to bed.
​
Lee Stockdale

Lee Stockdale won the 2022 United Kingdom National Poetry Prize for his poem “My Dead Father’s General Store in the Middle of a Desert.” His debut poetry book Gorilla was published by Main Street Rag Publishing Company in 2022. He lives with his wife in the North Carolina mountains where they practice hot yoga and feed the wild turkeys.