(al)most delicious is like the thoughts of a figure in a painting. But more than that it is a kaleidoscopic meditation on the theme of artist and model. Or like a room of mirrors in which looking and being seen are erotic, and creator, creation and observer are locked in a love triangle of reflection and illusion. Enter, listen to the voices and the music, you will be rewarded.

-Richard Garcia

Cati Porter is founder and editor-in-chief of Poemeleon: A Journal of Poetry. Her poems have been anthologized in White Ink: Poems on Mothers and Motherhood (Demeter Press), Bedside Guide to No Tell Motel -- Second Floor (No Tell Books), and Letters to the World: Poems from the Women's Poetry Listserv (Red Hen Press). She is the author of a book of poems, Seven Floors Up (Mayapple Press, 2008), as well as several chapbooks: small fruit songs: prose poems (Pudding House Publications, 2008), and what Desire makes of us (forthcoming as an e-book with illustrations, Ahadada Books).

Still Life with Interior

In the artist's studio there is light.

There may or may not be heat, but there are
places to lie, to sit; to lean, to squat.

Over there is the doorway: the door, locked,

or possibly not. Here, an undercooked
egg, forgotten breakfast, eaten late

when hunger has driven the hand to raise fork

to tongue, swallowing without knowledge, or
regret. The artist is asleep. His brush,

extension of his hand, is poised above

her hair. She sees distance he is painting
in, and is stunned. The model has gone,

the made bed cold. No luxurious motion

can propel her beyond canvas' plane,
save for her strange mind

languishing beneath the paint.