William Repass

Nude in Jaundice no.8:

the easel
in your studio
space dries out

of reach of us with
me full-frontal, your
model: shoulders

rendered in the still
life like fashion
of stunned

lemons, my sour
looking eyes half
oblique––sultry
or sundered––the

pinched
blobs of linseed
oil coagulate
my want
                scraped off
on a pallete-knife. &

the portrait
crumpled
for a blank sheet



Limit Use:

this has
not been
evaluated by
the food&drug
administration; neither
is it legal
tender for any
public or
private debts.

cocktail-party
unsuitable best
when not consumed
with intoxicants; while
taking this
do not operate
heavy machinery or
perform open
heart surgery.

the food&
drug admin. has
-n't time to
thumb a crisp
-ly freshprinted
page (one
dose) with this
etched in laser
jet lettering––much less
wrinkle their monument
-al nose at the scent.

officially, useless &
worse, unsafe for children
& pregnant mothers;
what if:
the baby has a club
foot? the baby starts
composing sonnets?

clinical testing has shown
long-term ex
-posure may
damage ambition, cause
readers to ex
-change words
for body; you can't afford
that & neither can
the food&drug ad
-ministration.



William Repass is a recent graduate from Hendrix College, originally from Los Alamos, New Mexico. He's been published in Counterexample Poetics, Marco Polo Art Magazine, the Southern Literary Festival Anthology, and Aonian, with a forthcoming publication in A-Minor Magazine.
 
 
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