A Woman Magically Appearing

To a Woman Magically Appearing
Twiggy Exhibition National Portrait Gallery
Feb-March 2010

You can look down
On all the decades of
Your Twiggy-life if
You sneak up the back
And along to the balcony
With the iron railings
And see the people
Looking in your eyes
And reading what you wrote.

Once in the not-quite square
Gallery w/its ornate marble floor,
There’s the one of you
With huge eyes soft-tone
Close up – you can see
The freckles and how you
Support your chin against palm
Nice fingers neatly folded
Just brushing lightly parted lips.

Then there’s Ronald
Traeger’s photos, dead at 32,
Blow-ups of you laughing
On the Downs or
Free-wheeling on a
Bicycle with small wheels
And big handle bars in your
Mini dress legs shot
Out and forward
In lace-up shoes and ¾ socks.

And there’s how they caught you
In the ‘70s “me as a woman
Not as a photo shoot” –
In a small interior your place
With its mod circle
Paintings + floral-quilted
Arm chair and the intimate
Architecture of you in a
Red evening gown,
And recently in the 2000s
Just as predictably blemish-free. And

The one that stays most
With me from ’67 – when we
Students with our sex stories
Walked in that rolling way left shoulder
Slightly pointing forward as
If this walking would make us
Talk better or be more alive
To the currents of the time –
It’s the famous one of you
At a Ticker Tape parade:
“Melvin came up with
The idea of making masks
From B & W photographs of my face
Which he gave to the
Crowd to wear…” and only
You are real in yellow
Mini-dress and black leather
Draped around your shoulders.
And you finish your account,
“Melvin and the art direction team
Won several awards.”


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