In the Flesh: Stag at Sharkey's (1909)
Form in motion, no. 1
As the oxblood face drips fresh fear into him, the man’s mind sinks to the hardness of bone— how it leans into shape, softening the certainty of the face, the hardness in his line of sight— sunken into the moss of cloth, the hardness of the body he let inside him in the steam- dim shower of the gym, where he had learned to brace against a man mid-swing. The artist has left us with bodies straining past their will— muscles caught on the edge of drift. In bed, the ache to unmake a man twists two fists inside him. This, he thinks as his right hook arcs over the referee’s bulk to lay a kiss of battered flesh upon another’s hip.