‘Standing Nude’ by Jane Robinson

I’ve carried you down into the hall
and painted you again
on a six-foot canvas, your right toe

testing the waters of a pool
in blues so dense they’ve hollowed
a place on the linen threads,

carved out a bottomless pond.
By sheep-bitten grass and bog cotton,
a hinted road stretches, empty.

I have layered you onto the canvas,
full magentas and yellows and pinks,
then scraped you away – pared

back to some essential silence.
With paint under my fingernails
I throw myself at the future,

try to remember the patternworks
laid like silt layers in sandstone,
these dragmarks through time.

From issue 7: autumn/winter 2018

About the Author
Jane Robinson lives in Dublin and is the author of the poetry collections Island and Atoll (Salmon, 2023) and Journey to the Sleeping Whale (Salmon, 2018). She won the Strokestown International Poetry Competition and has published in journals including Magma, Abridged, The Interpreter’s House, Southword, The Stinging Fly and Poetry Ireland Review.