Eye Contact
A ghostly glow frames the face of a man with nothing to hide...
©Ultra Violet
From the portrait of Andreas Vesalius in De Humani Corporis Fabrica (The Structure of the Human Body), 1543.
A ghostly glow
frames the face of a man
with nothing to hide,
his vision honed
on the graceful heft
of charnel house bones
poached from the Cemetery
of the Innocents
and the hangman’s noose.
His fierce eyes
lock on ours, confident
as we stand beside him
witnessing the dissected truth
of a sternum’s three bones,
a sacrum’s six, the singular
presence of a ductus arteriosus.
With nostrils grooming death
and a flayed cadaver at hand,
his eyes compel us to plumb
The Fabrica’s woodcut
skeletons dressed in flesh
flaunting deltoids gaudy
as epaulets, each sartorius
ribboning a lusty thigh
of pained, praying souls
that mirror his heart and mind,
men muscled hard as gods
whose beauty turns
a blind eye toward death.
Come closer, his gaze
commands. Abandon fear
and Galen’s dogma.
Confirm my work to find
in a body’s design
the naked truth
your own keen eyes
can see.
