The Knife Woman
By Allison Funk
after Louise Bourgeois’s Femme-Couteau (1969-70)
On a bad day she feels the ache
of having been,
as if she’s become a phantom limb.
Then it starts, serrated wave
after wave,
everything dangerous, bladed:
the keen edge of a stair,
a pill bottle’s rim,
her plane about to go down
behind enemy lines
or into a wilderness
in which ready, set,
even the arrows of trees
are taking their aim.
What she needs is a survival knife,
but missing this,
she thinks of the sea star
in extremis, a creature
that can regrow an arm,
and the sculptor
who, nearly done for,
carves a likeness
out of marble
to sheathe herself.
Copyright © by the owner.
