She scratches a faint beard
Sinew and smoke against a wall of cinderblock
Casting her nets for a ride to work in the dust of a gravel lot
Calling on the picture of a man
The grizzled gentlemen and loafered princes
Who, she will tell me, light up her phone late at night
Hustle past without spilling a word in the dying purple light
Just like the picture of a man

On a sun-bleached couch in a dusty cramped apartment
You’ll stroke my straining neck, your eyes flashing blue
And the things he did I’ve hardly told myself I will sit and tell to you
But what is the picture of a man?
You’ll draw out the barbed years, working open
My clenched bony throat till his fists start to lose their hold
And maybe some shining morning, I’ll pray for peace on his soul
But what is the picture of a man?
Tell me, what is the picture of a man?

I still believe, children, in some kind of warm, forgiving light
That bears us away from our worn-out bodies and this wartorn life
And, I don’t know, but if anybody in this world just fades to black
I’d think it’s the man that lives off picking on them that are being held back

The lunchroom simmers just above silence
Every face buried in the school paper, which we seldom read
His proclamation blooms through the black-and-white photocopied sheet
Like burning petals on the picture of a man
The blood rushes into my cheeks
I quake before him, so bare, bold, reconciled
My ugly words rush back, taking shape as the work of a child
Desperate to hide in the picture of a man
I flood with the shame of a hateful child
Beaten down by the picture of a man
I plead guilty as that brutal child
So bound by the picture of a man
How do I do right by that terrified child
So lost in the picture of a man?
So lost in the picture of a man?
So lost in the picture of a man?