17.1 Summer 2019

Taneum Bambrick After Picasso's "Head of a Woman"

That night the neighbor’s cat pawed a pigeon down
          and tore off one wing.

Whiskey glazed the glasses we kept refilling.

Across the street—more an alley, the length of my extended
          body—I watched a woman’s toes

under a stiff curtain. She mopped to a song
          about a girl tearing a flower from her hair.

I think you’re supposed to think a man pinned it there.

Her daughter sat in their doorframe.
          A boy lighting her lower lip.

She smoked for the first time. I heard her ask how she looked
          holding it. With you,

I wonder what I should be. Are my hands stitched back?
          Is my face completely behind me.


Taneum Bambrick is the author of Vantage, which was selected by Sharon Olds for the 2019 American Poetry Review/Honickman first book award (Copper Canyon Press). She is a Stegner Fellow at Stanford University.