Master of the Female Half-Lengths

“Master of the Female Half-Lengths” by Mirande Bissell is the second runner-up of the 2024 Sappho Prize for Women Poets, selected by Megan Fernandes. We’re honored to share this striking poem with you.

They don’t stay away, the people I love.
When they die, like dream theater–
personae from every act they show up
on the proscenium, dismembered,
caught in the heat. My aunt,
my lost students bounce on half
a torso like a Marine who doesn’t
know how bad he’s got it. I hiss
at them not to come closer. Here
disintegrates them. Here won’t say
if they are blasted or reborn.
Only the body needs to know itself
as whole: to conserve canvas,
a Flemish master cut female bodies
at the navel, the women’s heart-shaped
faces like pale evenings cracked
with elegant longing for assignations.
I am naked in the morning, my knees
pulled to a stubborn point.
In the midst of life, the black linseed
medium thickens in tin vats on the sleeping
porch. The little dog yaps and pees
in the studio where the students’
mink brushes fold textiles over
my hips, the heart of my legs.