She strides in, a striking figure all eyes add up:
taller than most men on the train, curves

slick in shiny stretch pants. A long knife scar
rides her left cheek like a skid mark

on the dangerous road she once took, and yet
she stands erect, proud and self-possessed

as a statue of Venus. So hard to solve this problem
of division, to see how one bisecting line

white as fear, sharp and clean as a shard
of ice can brand her as more or less

than a woman. I'd expect her downcast,
hunched in a corner, or out for vengeance, slashing

men to nothing with a swift razor-blade
glance. Shouldn't one with that face fall to pieces?

Instead serenity flows from bottomless eyes
focused on infinity--she's a Hindu goddess,

female honed by Picasso, bursting all frames
of reference. Nothing of this woman coheres,

nothing about her is easy--like someone we know
but can't name or a puzzle that's just too complex,

she's studied from all angles, then subtracted,
as every pair of eyes turns away.

"The Sum of Her," The Spoon River Poetry Review, Fall 1999