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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Kathryn Stripling Byer
Kathryn Stripling Byer
Kathryn Stripling Byer grew up in southwest Georgia, graduated from Wesleyan College in Macon, Georgia, and earned her Master of Fine Arts from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro,...
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Vanity  
by Kathryn Stripling Byer

Without hands

a woman would stand at her mirror
looking back only,
not touching, for how could she?
Eyelid.
Cheek.
Earlobe.
Nack-hollow.
The pulse points that wait to be dusted
with jasmine
or lavender.
The lips she rubs
rose with a forefinger.
She tends the image
she sees in her glass,
the cold replication
of woman,
the one
who dared eat
from her own hand
the fruit of self-knowledge.



From Catching Light by Kathryn Stripling Byer. Copyright © 2002 by Kathryn Stripling Byer. Reproduced with the permission of Louisiana State University Press. All rights reserved.
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