Carrion in Paint

Myrna Báez: Retrato de un sueño/ Portrait of a Dream

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I’ll know when the other woman

in the painting and I

are one.

Time’s winged chariot

will change its track and run

into the bleak wind

throttling it from the back.

Then the woman and I

will seek each other out,

reach a hand to help

ourselves

to leap

from the abyss.

There will be that second pause

when we meet in mid-air

and hang from the lair

where carrion weeps to think

it can feed

only one of me.