BY JANÉE J. BAUGHER

—after Yves Klein’s (1928-1962) series of paintings Anthropométrie in
  which nude female models served as “live” paintbrushes

He’d scoop a handful of monochrome IKB 3 (ultramarine blue)
to spread across a woman’s nude body. The live paintbrush
working the wall-sized canvas before an audience:

never touched the absence-of-color/color-of-space-itself blue
but being touched by blue’s hand-smeared blue
blinding her body in blue and directing a breast a thigh to canvas.

When the brush didn’t do it right, Klein would strike the nude blue body
from the stage, then he’d destroy the canvas in a fit. But
when it did work out, he’d accept the ovation

as if it were his body broadcast, as if he’d ever smothered blue
his suit or bow tie. When he died, the woman propped-up in an old tin can,
bristles hardening from disuse and blue.