Submit your work, meet writers and drop the ads. Become a member
Iris Woodruff Feb 2017
Having observed others and containing the self consciousness of a noticer (do other people look at me the way I look at them?) she would dress in old borrowed clothing that smelled like other peoples’ laundry and leather because secretly she wanted to wear the other people try them on and she had this wrinkle between each brow that made her look just sort of worried no matter how she tried to press and smooth that wrinkle down with her thumb and in very private moments she’d stare at her features in the mirror with a sort of curiosity because she’d been told by leering men that she was beautiful but sometimes she saw only features: Nose eyes mouth all in pretty good proportion sure but she supposed the thing that held her curiosity was not her face itself but rather the disconnect between the face and the universe of thought behind it and all this she’d marveled at a very young age as ma would see her staring at herself in front of the bathroom mirror or in store windows and tell her not to be so vain kid to hurry along
And so she feared writing about her own vulnerable beauty for fear that she might be both of those things—vulnerable and beautiful. Instead she would take an hour long train ride, fake-dozing so as not to be ticketed, walk anonymous between busy persons until she reached a place that satisfied her Washington Square park, perhaps, or some small playground on the lower east side, or down by water or the hip corner shops in Brooklyn. And there, in strangers, she would find her vulnerable beauty, and there with the aid of a pen they became her and she became them.
Iris Woodruff Feb 2017
Somethin' about an empty room, depending on how the light asks to be let in on its edges.
An empty room don’t expect you to do nothin' whatever. And its floor responds in this kinda lilting relief when you tap-dance barefoot upon it.
If you sit in all its corners, with your eyeballs (try it!) you can trace the refractions and suggestions on the wall, 'specially the places where paint and odd plaster stick up like little men and cast shadows all their own.
You can spend hours doing this.
You, the impressionable film upon which the world's projected herself—you turn the world upside down and make sense of the image in this empty box.
You
Make art here.
Shout here! Run and kick and punch through the walls and
Love them as you do so, kid.
Something about emptiness itself, gets a lot of flack, you think,
cast as grave.
Hell!
Emptiness: potential,
Emptiness: casting being in sharp distinction.
Emptiness: sensual, like breath before the
action of the human magnetic.
You: the one alive in this your empty room and therefore acutely aware of
what you chose to project in such vibrant relief.
Today, it is newspapers and magazine clippings and a notebook and a blue pen and a book by Susan Sontag.
Today you lie on the woody floor, supine, eyes wide
and become part of it
your lungs breathe life into this ancient emptiness. And the air between its walls vibrates, and sighs, nascent, ‘thank you.’
Iris Woodruff Feb 2017
Well, in one of the various underground labyrinths before you get on the L train back uptown.
A man, young man, sitting at a harshly assembled desk
behind an old typewriter
behind a sign: (F-R-E-E Poetry)

feverishly typing
stopping to pause every few seconds
behind a line of six people
Including me
Waiting for our
Free poems, please.

wore a scarf and hat
because it is cold
In Brooklyn in January

Six clicks, space, pause, eleven clicks
Enter,

Behind furrowed features
Something metaphysical
A ghost.  

Everyone in line leaning forward—
Make something
Holy for us
Angel.

(didn't look up once.)
Iris Woodruff Feb 2017
when you are old
I hope you
                     remember those
holy
moments
       on my window-bed
between
our hip-bones
     and
eyes,
          minds, torsos twisting
             skin never close enough to the other’s
laughter.
                               and cascading
                                      hair-curtains
            ­                                      lips
                                                  breathing
                                                           other’s
                                                                ­breath
                                                                ­      sweet and
                                   longing
                                                     words words
                                                        no words
                                                       one word:

                                                      now – here.
nowhere love here ***
Iris Woodruff Feb 2017
Kissing yellow-orange suede
lips,
barely brushing
hesitate to puncture such
unbroken flesh

then the light body lowers and feet
turn home again, left
hand
keeping sunrise and
saving it for breakfast.
Iris Woodruff Feb 2017
Reminded her of
Velvet, pushed the wrong way or
Maybe the matted

Fur of a stuffed animal

— The End —