i. Aesthetics: Rome, 1978

Definitions of space by mirrors & windows.

Her hands caress the wall.

In the mirror black brocade opens
to reveal one breast.

A keyboard, brick & raw iron.

The weather is perfect, the sky as blue
as the most exploded tradition fames.

The body, her own body in frame
caught at that point where motion

becomes repose,
a fleeting settling onto paper.

Can you hear the luxury?

Negative impression her prone
body makes

in powder, the impression
of light on silver salts.

ii. New York, East Village, January 1981

She experiences flesh precisely.

Not suffering from any kind of hysterical
numbness, but obstinately

confronts the physical, twenty-two.

Her bed, so close to the window.
The open pane of glass

racing in hollows, her knuckles,
arms

holding up her toes sheets flapping
in the wind

where Francesca
Woodman will throw herself
from the twelfth floor.

It's never easy.
Better to laugh.

A verbal narrative would be too complex,
too slow,

would not demonstrate
how our lives

are a charade, conformist
& banal.

iii. Some Disordered Interior Geometries, Detail: 1981

The mirror is a sort of rectangle.
They say mirrors are specified,

specified water. A rectangle is almost a square.
A square created with shutter speed

rolling up her stocking. The mirror
cannot believe its own surface,
water or not, the body's inner force.

She is at this moment
brighter than magnesium ignited.

We cannot say anything about her eyes.

We cannot say anything.

She is also breathing heavily.

She was found naked
trembling with cold, waiting

for the proper exposure.