Half Face Song

—after Alex Katz’s The Black Dress

All my pretty black dresses and my serious
hairstyles. They mean business. They mean
quiet undertows. Men with half-faces have no idea
I have so many possibilities. My legs blue.

My legs yellow-nyloned. My hair in blue-black
shine. My hair flipped one way. My hair Niagara-
falling down the back of a chair. My hair smeared
into a doorway. I can have half a face too.

Dear men, you cannot dream of all my paintings.
You cannot dream of all my black dressed looks.
How I can wear my black dress one day and say,
Look at all my flashy pearls, this collarbone of mine.

I can wear my black dress the next day and say, No-
thing sparkles on me. I am boring. I am bored. My
half-faced woman can wear a black dress. Watch you
from the corner of her one eye. I give her a basket

to keep a mirror in. I want her to always dream
her face’s other half.