Portrait of a Modern Woman
Her skeletal cheeks bug-eyed and caught
in the rifle scope of a camera barrel, body
splayed in a million shades of
gloss streaked starshine smirk
hung to dry:
the shoulders the collarbone the breasts
picked clean by vulture eyes,
her teeth smiling row by row
on the telephone wire of her lips like stuffed doves,
her tanned-leather Miami flesh
gutted of freckle and dimple alike,
her carcass resting upon
the cool face of a magazine
like flawlessly symmetrical ocean flotsam.
How white the smile
of Stars; of People,
who above our collective eyes
form rawboned resemblances of truth
even as the ribs of constellations rise
in the hot valleys of night,
steaming and fading into death
only to be replaced by some new, naive burst
of beauty.
Posted Oct 12, 2018, 2:19 AM UTC · edited