January 22, 2022Wide-Hipped Women in StuccoElizabeth Degenhardt

I am seeing wide-hipped women in the stucco in the ceiling.

See them take shape out of nothing—their bodies, their haunches,

their breasts, the dark cleavage where the plaster accumulates.

All the rest on my mind and they materialize up there in the

white of my room’s imagination—bending, reaching, bare

wisps and outlines—the shapes in my life now are wide.

I’ve lain here long enough and not cracked a magazine.

Ample flesh, perhaps ample thoughts this field where

the ample women work and move, this high vast sky.