In her roaring twenties she's at the nucleus of life.
She wears Kaa the way others wear feathers
under the slow-revolving string lights of Panama.
She paints Darwin's turtles and gives them to Brittanica.
Her religion is listed as Sun Worshiper,
She signs herself to pictures: "Isabel Cooper"
Her lone-life is surrounded by compatriots--the stars
of the Village--who punctuate words with cigarettes
and give her cliched amours: "you outshine the sun",
"your eyes are like stars", "you're beautiful", "I love you".
She says she'll know her husband when se can paint him,
entering her bedroom, without laughing.
She meets a Georgetown Lawyer on a train--Mahaffie--
paints him in oil, and promises herself to him.
A man ruled by railroads wins a woman ruled by nothing
with only the words "Somehow, I find you pleasing."
She signs his image ICM, and never signs anything else.
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