I wear beneath my skin
(underwear I think they call it) a callous patience that is waiting
to undermine your oppressive binary opposition
between the inside and the outside and
what has to be cohesive in art, the impersonal
in poetry I so resent because it is
absolute
bullshit. Can you tell — through the whiteness of my pale-ass
thighs, the indestructibility of my athlete’s
feet — the competition, hot coals at the surface — can you see
through my soles to the quick burn of the sun that makes me go pink —
I’m not blushing. I’m talking about sunburn. I’m talking
about my pink and silky, flowery, fuck-me deliberate
underwear and my pubes that peek out defiantly
in binary opposition to the labour costs of aesthetic vulnerability.
Poetry? Or pussy? It’s all quite unconventional these days.
And I’m pondering an overwhelming question that you pose about
ladies and perfume and the validity of a messianic impulse
that comes too early, two-thirds in… to say:
umm, nope.
Can you tell (because it’s taken us a while to get here,
and I suspect that you’ve misread the situation),
can you tell what I’m talking about?
Oh digressions on digressions on digressions…
And again:
“That is not what I meant, at all.”
– Emma Thompson