Bad
I want to touch him Dianne Seuss says
of Cornelis Norbertus Gijsbrechts,
the seventeenth century Flemish painter
I suppose he was a bad man.
“Raul is perfect,” I text a friend about
my new yoga instructor. “He took
off his shirt before and after class.”
Weren’t all men bad back then?
Raul wears the same two black socks,
one with a hole. Sunglasses and
a muscle shirt. Muscles.
Weren’t women bad as well?
How badly I’d wanted to touch
my first yoga instructor, how he’d
saunter into class late, the desk
girls giggling, “Oh Yogi!”
They fluttered around us like
exotic birds when he used me
to demonstrate Thai massage.
I ask Raul, “Have you ever used your
Yoga Stick for Thai massage?”
Or did they only exist within the confines
of the badness of men and thus became known as good?
Diane wants to reach into her painter’s
velvet darkness and stroke his pale cheek.
She wants to see his eyes fasten over her head.
I want to drip my fingers into Raul’s
collarbone, drift them down his chest,
take his hips into my hands. I want to
surprise him. She wants to peel Cornelis
from his painting, feed him his own
strawberries, his own heavy grapes.