POUR, TEAR, CARVE

Hold Nothing

By Emily Decker

—after A. Balasubramaniam’s Hold Nothing, 2012

What will you hold
tonight, tomorrow, in the end—
between your outstretched arms,
between those sockets and sinews
between the shadows cast
by a fiberglass form or twisted fate—
that you cannot hold now?

*A Balasubramaniam,* Hold Nothing, 2012. Fiberglass, resin, and acrylic paint, 42 x 24 x 7 in. The Dreier Fund for Acquisitions, 2014. Courtesy The Phillips Collection.

Emily Decker is a writer and editor who lives in Baltimore, Maryland. A Virginia native raised in Ghana and then in Atlanta, Georgia, she holds a master's degree in Education from Georgia State University. She is currently working on her first collection of poems.