three mirrors sit at every woman’s shrine:
one for feline smiles, one for big doe eyes,
and one, i say, for the lackluster guise
painted on to play well and truly mine.
put on like peafowls, zipping at the spine
to posture at great gods greater than men
in a dainty filigree diadem,
beam beneath its weight, wear oil-sheen arrays;
in due course, i’ll come to envy their greys,
all the trifold things that do not haunt them.
women are fountains believed b o t t o m l e s s
possessions bred in the skin- thinning stretch,
belly swells power, growing lineage.
our youth becomes a thing of providence,
slack-jawed draining the dregs of wantonness.
salt-smells of war are iron seductive
donning cutlass curves of breasts gone rusted,
against hillsides and haystacks, our sons graze
each twinge of womb marks an emptying gaze.
beauty, then worth, out in the gussets.
touch me not with softness poets describe,
use heavy butcher hands to halve, sliver,
until naught remains to love, unwithered;
take hesitant bites of fruit overripe,
hand to cheap spirits you wouldn’t imbibe.
if at my newest i was loved at all,
shiny pewter button, porcelain doll,
i’ll have a place, tarnished, under your thumb,
parlour cabinet bauble you’ll not part from,
better dull than on some other man’s wall.
there is illusion afforded to me
in how i cross my legs, avert my eyes,
tell me i sit pretty, shrouded in lies?
give appraisal packaged in niceties,
slick on perfumed petroleum jelly
preserve me in jars, keep pink and pristine
scour an aged, turning face again green;
poised for consumption, put on the platter,
blinded, or wisened—it wouldn’t matter,
for even made wild, the clipped bird still preens,
or, girl of cut glass
if i must be lovely,
let it be like this.
let it be all for you,
and allow me the mercy of believing it, too.
