Chitra Ganesh, How to Assemble a Flying Car (detail), 2018, linocut on tan BFK Rives. Courtesy of the artist & Durham Press.
Sex Odalisque
Pity the still of the sitter’s
routine, recumbently stuck in her dull rapture rut,
par for the course, and no
worse for the wear. What static, vacuous labor
it takes, to stretch out a couch, to keep a look put,
the de facto embargo
on rising or sighing, not to fritter
an itch, not straighten a slouch or tuck in a foot
but to remain so ably, so
complacently lush, contained and unstirred,
attained and untouched.
Hailey Leithauser is the author of two poetry collections: Saint Worm (Able Muse Press, 2019) and Swoop (Graywolf Press, 2013), which won the Poetry Foundation’s Emily Dickinson First Book Award and the Towson Prize for Literature. Her work has appeared in The Birmingham Poetry Review, 32 Poems, Cincinnati Review, The Hopkins Review, Plume, Poet Lore, AGNI, Alaska Quarterly Review, Hampden-Sydney Poetry Review, and The Yale Review. (updated 4/2023)
Leithauser’s AGNI poem “The Moon Speaks of Polar Bears” was chosen for The Best New Poets 2010.