Being Morandi’s Bottle

I pull a dress over my head
calm foggy blue linen
sleeved in lavender,
press frizzed hair
between two hot blades.

I drag a lipliner
across my cupid’s bow
like a violinist gliding
hair over string
hovering on a velvety G.

I cut a lock of mine
and dip it into cream paint,
cover each inch of my skin
in fleshy brushstrokes,
imperfectly human.

I spread butter-yellow tights up my legs,
pale shins gleaming through.
In a rectangle of quietness
my extending slender neck
rests tenderly on my body.

Beneath my thighs, the slanted table
is a plain of olive green,
and steel blue hints of cast shadows.
Light hits the soft curve
of my lumbar spine –

like a cashmere decrescendo,
weaving into limestone grey.
Out there: AI-generated
Starry Nights indistinguishable
to an untrained eye.

Rolling news of military strikes
and dead bodies pinging next to bikini pics
of ambiguously aged girls
while I hide in my pocket
of supple harmony.

Kim Cullen is a dual-national poet. By exploring identity, her work creates new pockets of belonging. She has been published by Four Tulips Publishing, Poetry and Audience, From Arthur’s Seat, and Tenter Hook. She won the Alison Morland Prize 2025.