If I could paint, I would paint
a wrestler’s voluntary agony as he tries
to flip a heavier wrestler onto his back and

pin him there, until the gasp
and the slap of the mat tell him he’s
won, the single rivulet of sweat inching

wetly down his neck and the bruise
blooming tenderly under his rib cage, his
grimace and the way his arm’s bent

backwards at an impossible angle,
crushing, clutching the opponent’s
breathless throat beneath his hands.

I’d paint a girl with long fingers
eating cashews from a plastic bag
and calmy crying, as if it’s something

she’d been planning to do all along,
in this armchair, barefoot with this one lamp
lit and this bag of salted cashews.

Next I’d paint a woman lying nude
on a bed with red silk sheets, like in
a Titian painting—the color the only line

that delineates her form in shadowed folds
of supple crimson, the only thing that shows
she has no arms or legs. I’d paint it so

you almost wouldn’t notice anything
except her lips and eyes, the way the light
plays out against her gently sloping chest,

her shoulders’ birdlike curve dipping beneath
the sheet, and you’d follow it down and see it
quietly, almost imperceptibly, stop.

And then I’d paint a boy of twelve or so
from the back, so he looks like he could be
anywhere from eight to twenty-two,

and it wouldn’t make a difference. And he’d stand
with his hands stuffed stubbornly into the empty
pockets of his jeans, which would have

a hole in the knee, but you couldn’t tell
from the picture. And he’d be at a gas station
somewhere—early evening or early morning,

standing in front of a neon sign with two letters
burnt out and a third one flickering dim
and he’d have been standing there for a while,

and he would be trying and trying to whistle—
without luck—but you wouldn’t know that;
I’d paint it so you couldn’t see his face.