The Artist Model

The Artist Model*

Draw your pleasure-paint your pleasure-
express your pleasure...
--Pierre Bonnard (1867-1947)

Stephanie by Kim Frohsin
(Pen, ink and acrylic on paper)

You walk out of Bonnard's mango-colored light,
walk out of something to name
would make it vanish, pure, undiluted, bare
face and legs and breasts
defying the empty space
and smile-your lower
lip pink to the tilt
of a soft chin and neck. 

The world is unreal and you're in it like a cameo,
stripped of line, edge, unassisted by shade,
as if your boudoir-skin were caressed 
by your pose and shapes dissolve
and outlines swoon. 

I have no defense and reach for you with my eyes,
my hands, then my sex lit like a painted
fetish, enters and we are the ones
in Le Jardin Sauvage, no longer wild,
gone together, protean and slippery
before the sun goes down
and it gets cold. 

Daniel Y. Harris

* - Published at Poetry Magazine.com (April 2003)

Daniel Y. Harris holds a M.DIV from The University of Chicago and is a poet, visual artist and essayist who is a member of the faculty of Lehrhaus Judaica and teaches courses in kabbalah and the literature of Jewish mysticism in the San Francisco Bay Area. In Posse Review, Poetry Magazine.com, Convergence, The Denver Quarterly, Panoply, Shampoo and Deviant Lit are among his publication credits. Work is forthcoming in Muse Apprentice Guild. The Euphrat Museum, The Center for Visual Arts and Dolly Fiterman Fine Arts are among his art exhibition credits.

Kim Frohsin (Stephanie: Pen, Ink and Acrylic on Paper) was born in Atlanta GA in 1961, studied in France and earned a BFA in 1985. She is a full-time gallery represented studio fine artist who works with several media from photography, mixed media and printmaking. She draws from the nude on a regular basis and paints with oil, acrylic and encaustic on a wide variety of surfaces. She is represented by Dolby-Chadwick Gallery in San Francisco and The John Natsoulas Gallery in Davis.