It oozed out of the ink 
into this observer’s body part 
The same spot that reacts to roller coasters 
Somewhere between breath and umbilicus 

From the wall of Museum Ludwig 
a photoprint of Picasso 
Where he sat outside in some 
public European place 

Naked but for a fedora 
and leather string necklace 
With pendent fresh flowers 
perfuming his chest 

Propriety imposed only by the photographer 
and the corner of a building 
Covering his pubis 
with a pristine wedge of shade 

Remaining skin tanned all over 
as though he’d spent the summer 
on the celibate-white cushioned recliner 
A past master in the art of amour 

Scent of gardenia and testosterone 
seducing every woman who walked by 
without moving a whit of notorious manhood 
And nothing has changed 

—Published previously in MG Versions (France, 2005); appears here with poet’s permission

Ellaraine Lockie

is widely published and awarded as a poet and essayist. Recent poems have won the 2019 Poetry Super Highway Contest, the Nebraska Writers Guild’s Women of the Fur Trade Poetry Contest, and New Millennium’s Monthly Musepaper Poetry Contest. Sex and Other Slapsticks (Presa Press, 2019) is her 14th chapbook. Earlier collections have won Poetry Forum’s Chapbook Contest Prize, San Gabriel Valley Poetry Festival Chapbook Competition, Encircle Publications Chapbook Contest, Best Individual Poetry Collection Award from Purple Patch magazine in England, and the Aurorean’s Chapbook Choice Award.

Her poems have found their way onto broadsides, buses, rented cars, bicycles, cabins, greeting cards, key chains, bookmarks, mugs, coffee-sack labels, church bulletins, radio shows, and cable TV, as well as into hundreds of national and international journals, magazines, and anthologies.

Ellaraine has been awarded multiple residencies and fellowships from both Centrum and Summer Literary Seminars, and thirty of her poems have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. She also teaches writing workshops, frequently judges poetry contests, and serves as Poetry Editor for the lifestyles magazine Lilipoh.

Her pollages, which combine handmade papermaking, poetry, and collage, have appeared in juried art shows around the country and have been the subject of a one-woman gallery art show and several online essays and interviews. They also exist in several private art collections and have appeared in: The Centrifugal Eye, Rio Grande Review, Homestead Review, Sein Und Werden (England), Prairie Connection, Ascent Aspirations, and Alchemy. Ellaraine’s book The Gourmet Paper Maker (how to make paper with the inedible parts of fruits and vegetables) is published in six languages.

See also: https://www.bookthatpoet.com/poets/lockieel.html