Holiness
shaindel beers
Lise wonders how many of the women who lie naked on her fur throws wonder how many other women have lain there. Are they thinking about anything other than themselves when she captures them, making the present eternal? Yesterday was a girl who had just found out she was pregnant and scheduled nudes immediately, paranoid that her body would never look the same. Today, it's a brunette who has a theory that cigarettes will become illegal during her lifetime and smoking photos will be a black-market fetish item. So far, she has reclined on the white bearskin, a pearl necklace and cigarette as her only props; now she is in black leather thigh boots, leaning over a chair, gazing into the distance. The smoke follows her around the room like a spirit, and Lise realizes this is what she's capturing for these women—a palpable boldness that emanates from them throughout the shoot. She's still waiting for someone to choose the tiny glass butterflies she picked up at State Street Market last weekend. Then, she will affix the ornaments to the body one by one, letting the lights shine through them like stained glass, the body as temple, literally.
Shaindel Beers' poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, including Poetry Miscellany, Minnesota Review, and The New Verse News. She is currently a professor of English at Blue Mountain Community College in Pendleton, Oregon, in Eastern Oregon's high desert and also serves as Poetry Editor of Contrary, and as a Poetry Reviewer for Bookslut. Recent work can be found online at damselflypress.net, www.projectedletters.com, and www.ignaviapress.com.