P. Hodges Adams

Sketch for the Judgement

after john singer sargent

what am i waiting for? someone to pull my body out of my body.
i want to be the boy and the hands on the boy, defining his ribs
just above the point where he gets undefined. sargent didn’t draw down
that far and by god i wish that was me. more shadow than genital.

how the sketch is headless: i would be mythic like that,
faceless. my name smeared with the heel of a hand, suggestion
of shoulder and nothing further. this is gender, done quick
in charcoal. still becoming, chimerical, unfinished.

P. Hodges Adams is a poet and playwright from a small town in Michigan. Currently, they are an MFA candidate at the University of Virginia. Their work has appeared or is forthcoming in Shenandoah, New Orleans Review, Pine Hills Review, and elsewhere. They were a finalist for both the 2021 Connecticut River Review Experimental Poetry Prize and the 2020 Graybeal-Gowen Prize for Virginia Writers. Hopefully they will transform into a beam of sunlight someday soon.