Friday, November 28, 2008

Beauty (poem #3)

I have gotten approximately ten marriage proposals.
Each one declaring, “I love you.”
I (might as well strip down) (those eyes peeling)
the breath (my breath) like the bedroom.

I realized (one day)
sitting on the Duomo steps that
every man who passed by
had looked up my skirt
(I see that head dip, peer)

These are out of proportation.
The David, his head, this is unrealistic—
The Italians with their grease sculpted hair
and grease (this imagined) seeping
from their pores, grease too, expulsion
through the mouth, skin.

My body as well (in comparison)
My hips (these women so small),
as if I were a sculpture
(Donatello’s David is my favorite,
his drooping butt).
Her hips are too large.
They cannot eat the meals that are laid out before me.

1 comment:

Colin Welch said...

I had trouble following what was being said in this poem. I liked the idea, and the images. But I'm too much of a grammar nazi, and I couldn't understand what was being said at times because pronouns shifted ambiguously and some sentences didn't have verbs...

But that's just me. I'm a jackass.

It's a good poem.