Desk, Virginia's

                                  

I imagine the desk a little lopsided, shimmed with love letters.

The sun from a far corner blanching the wood yellow.  

I picture her standing, leaning in at the desk 

binding the pamphlets by hand.

Bites in the darker wood where her hips pressed. 

Rings like bruises where bottles of thin ink rested. 

There’s a faint scribble in the middle,

sunken swatch

where wrist and elbow worked.

I imagine her sharp pen catching in the grooves.

In the next room, ghost sounds,

lead type dropping into wooden boxes 

Her husband standing at the hand press. 

Her fingernails bitten as she coins       

phrases    jump the fence    sticks and stones

Fingers sawing away at perfection. To get to 

the brain bone.   Nowhere for the novelist to pause,

whittling away at the wood of the night.

  after a photograph by Annie Leibovitz