I. Yellow fabric held aloft in wind by Nude, in Arctic landscape

                                Alma Noor, “Reclining Nude #207”

No drift in repand cursive wrought in turmeric wrapped—
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But easily in similes bound by a viewer’s paradigmatic chuck
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Me? Ahistorical neoclassical fluff. But, maybe, out of context:
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A snow & sea backdrop like just-before-sleep’s collage of possibilities
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(When I roused to send a risky text with turmeric-tinted finger pads)
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To become nude is not to become Nude. Ask the photographer—
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They undressed before alienating their eye & carving their body into sight

II. On dying red roses, held by Nude reclining on ice floe

                                Alma Noor, “Reclining Nude #404”

The roses’ site of course is context. Of import: . . . are imported.
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Not without attachment. Cliché’s backfill, authored by Love, et al.
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Of mind also: bad writing. The obvious comparisons, likely perpetrated
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By men: The loose petals like Nude’s nipples. By me: imitative
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Fallacy. (Only for illustrative purposes.) Looking at Nude, I overcorrect,
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Restrain desire. Worry’s course: I repeat the male gaze, objectify
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Their eyes disturb the still pond of my guard. A rock thrown in, depth plumbed

III. Nude in knee-high woolen socks, holding phallic object

                                  Alma Noor, “Reclining Nude #292”

                            “May whomever needs to hear this—feel more, feel further”
                            —JENNY JOHNSON, “BUTCH BLOW JOB”

Perspective wise, arctic mtns skirt high. Nude’s rock shrugged up
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On their hips—or is it driftwood? Puns seem the queerest figure
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Of speech. I ask no forgiveness. To my joys, I have added
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Longing. To my longing, I have added unrequitement
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Extension. Instinct. Imagination. Sortilege. I have drawn
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Myself out of my body. Into the world. Into this
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I have knelt in the snow somewhere. Why not at the foot of focus

//

Desire arrests me. It is a feeling like reaching while being held around the waist. The arms that hold me are a fear—a fear that I will reproduce the male gale or unwanted male attention, something with which many people I most often find myself attracted (i.e., those who were assigned female at birth) are too often confronted, by which they are harangued. I am a nonbinary trans person who presents more masc than not, but I don’t want to be in any way male, especially in terms of male enculturation.

But it’s not just that. I’m mentally ill. I have Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, and one of my obsessive themes is that I’m a uniquely horrible person and that by somehow having the very human and very normal experience of desiring another person, especially in that time period that is dazzling (but, for me, in the way of light catching on the glittering tornado of carpentry nails) any physical sensation of that desire (a racing heart in their company, a shiver seeing them) is evidence that I could be somehow crossing a boundary. Bad body, bad.

Historically, I dissociated and/or looked away in moments in which I was confronted with the bodies of others I desired, especially when I was a closeted queer. Locker rooms. Saunas in Iceland. Sharing hotel rooms with friends. Yes, there is something of shame there—the internalization of which is a story for another time.

But visual art and the process of examining that art through the ekphrastic mode of poetry has allowed me to confront these unhealthy relationships to others’ bodies, and to my own desires.

Alma Noor’s photographic series Reclining Nudes provides a direct antithesis to my own fears about my body, in it taking up space. In the high Arctic, they set up their camera and then enter the frame, always seeking to align theirbody in a position of strength, they told me. This stance squares off with the series’s title of “Reclining Nudes,” the submission position often afforded a visual art stock figure. In this poem, I chose to respond in three sections, to three of the photographs: Reclining Nudes #207, #404, and #292 respectfully, all of which feature Noor holding an object. I chose this as a unifying motif for this poem as it gestured toward further expansion of the self, something that has been affirming for me.

I envision each section as a sort of half sonnet, in which something is wanting to be said behind the saying. Ultimately, these poems are about beyondness. How do we move beyond the shames internalized into us? How do we embrace desire and know it is beyond our control? How do we hold each other accountability for actions within our control? What more do we add to a visual figure by simply looking and reacting with our humans brains and bodies? What does a Nude mean beyond someone who is nude? What does an object mean in the context of history andculture? What does it mean to have a trans queer person view a Nude as opposed to a cishet person? How do we think beyond the male/female gaze to consider new forms of looking?

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(Note: Alma Noor’s Reclining Nudes series is not in the public domain, which is why we’ve linked to it above.)