The faint

Ten easels in a circle,
flex snaking to the centre, fan-heater’s
tilted-up cobra-head, its hot jet
on her chicken legs, her bloated feeling
from not eating. She shivers

as they try out charcoal on her,
on big cheap paper, blacking in fishy ribs,
puckered-up nipples, empty skin rippling,
her breasts little pockets, pelvis jutted out,
neck swanlike, eyes whippetish,

each week better and better at measuring,
really getting her – one bold stroke a leg,
her arching back, neck stretched giraffesque
or like an elephant’s trunk held erect,
its thin skin ever more taut

until she crumples onto the floorboards –
abstract smatterings round her head like stars,
thick smear of ochre under her – the day she drops
flat out on a Pollock, no-one able to save her,
not all the talent in that room.