by Eileen Walsh Duncan
Be two peeled eggs
and nothing more:
Creaseless eyes
Padded cheekbones
Hapless lips,
Breasts, vulva, buttocks, posed.
Be two thighs, never parted
and always parting just for
him and her and him.
Be again, exposed, dollops
on a plate, shells and tissue shreds
artfully arranged, what decorum,
what a statement, how edgy.
Because one of you is never enough,
Be two.
But really.
Be the immortal ellipse
to be anything.
Be food of the gods,
lucent and slipping
down throats,
the eternal “O” of awe
the shape that all desire takes,
the pliable answer
filling the fallen mouth
of every beholder.
Open on command.
Be the sculpted altar
of perfection, to press and drool
to squeeze into
the relentless curve.
Be the only hope,
consumable disposable heaven,
the impossible made smooth smooth flesh.
Be nothing else.
No thought stretching the human continuum
No voice lapping the edge of thought,
redrawing the maw into meaning. No.
Your soul a dried splat on glass.
Evaporate while we watch.
If you are not pretty,
Be the clam
slapped shut in a shell,
steely and lipless:
mars and scars, ruddy fibers and shame.
Be bubbled
make fish mouths and say thank you
in your silted voice.
Be buried there.
Be writer, teacher, ambassador,
lawyer, doctor, engineer:
compensate.
Lick your own salty wounds,
wear wan little lives
at a discount.
Be the blister flesh
of not-seen, not-heard
salved in bitter algae,
the detritus of centuries.
Be oysters splayed on ice,
suffocating in thin air.
If you are not perfect
in matter, you do not matter.
Snap up this bitterest seed
and culture it, mucous on grit.
Truss it up as love,
the body in mirrors, two dimensions removed.
Be this canvas,
the consummate only art,
the impossible made pretty pretty
trap.
Eileen Walsh Duncan's mental maps are comprised of food landmarks: but on the true sustenance front, here is a map defined by poems.
