Andrea Ross

La Negresse
      --What Henri Matisse painted when he got too old to dance or swim.

Part sky,

part earth; with epaulet-

wings and oak-leaf hands,

this towering Josephine

Baker dances smooth as a vowel,

limbs bent in circumflex accents,

her famous banana skirt ripening. She shimmies

into his beloved Mediterranean

with eyebrow-shaped doves

through quartets of color:

dried persimmon,

ripe pomegranate,

deep absinthe.


Copyright © 1998 by Andrea Ross. All rights reserved.