She whispers in my ear 
until she is my ear. 
It’s a form of torture, 
being taken over 

by an outside force, 
whether I will or no. 
She goads me to grab 
the grist of my life 

like a gun, and shoot. 
Any semblance 
of order is useless—
supreme anarchist, 

she rides me, turns 
my head in the street. 
It’s she who decides 
what to record, how 

to decipher the code 
of each body. 
She uses the bronze 
for her own ends—

the muscles ripple 
for the pleasure 
of her hands. 

The Sculptor and His Muse (cast bronze, 1895)*
by Auguste Rodin (1840–1917), French sculptor and photographer

*Publisher’s Notes:

For an image whose details are easier to make sense of, see a reproduction in white at Meisterdrucke Kunstreproduktionen.

Image above was downloaded from the public domain at Wikimedia Commons (18 July 2021).

For details about this sculpture, see The Dallas Museum of Art collections (Texas, USA), and scroll down to “General Description” (Heather MacDonald, DMA label copy, 2010).

Cynthia Anderson

is the author of ten poetry books, most recently a collection of cherita, haiku, senryu, and tanka entitled The Missing Peace (Velvet Dusk Publishing, 2021). She co-edited the anthology A Bird Black As the Sun: California Poets on Crows & Ravens (Green Poet Press). Her poems have appeared in numerous journals, including Spillway, Crab Creek Review, Apercus, Askew, San Pedro River Review, Mojave River Review, The Coil, and Split Rock Review, among others. Her work has been nominated for Best of the Net and the Pushcart Prize. She lives in the Mojave Desert near Joshua Tree National Park.

Author’s website: www.cynthiaandersonpoet.com