Dreaming Picasso by Francine Sterle

All night an accelerating

geometry of eyes—hundreds

shaped like birds or boats

or beetles, simplified to dots

or crosses or a pair of 2s or mis-

matched diamonds, perfect zeros,

scoops of moon placed sidewise

or lengthwise on a face, slipping

out of orbit on a cheek, hung

under an ear, planted mid-forehead,

paper-thin planes of them,

each one alive and staring

from the dislocated faces of wives,

lovers, mothers, serene and lopsided,

splintered, wrenching, ravaged,

a proliferating gallery of women,

terraced in my head as I sleep,

and my own curious eye:

steering toward what it perceives,

capturing exact duplicates of each

stylized eye I run by,

as I race to comprehend

what I'm taking in, what expression

I'd see if I raised the mirror

to find my own eye, distorted

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