Ode to Wattles
I want to write about my wattles—oooo, I
lust after it,
I want to hold a mirror under my
chin so I can see the new
events in solid geometry
occurring below my jaw, which was
all bone till now, and now is jam-packed
reticule. I love to be a little
disgusting, to go as far as I can
into the thrilling unloveliness
of an elderwoman’s aging. It is like daring
time, and the ancient laws of eros,
at once. But when I look down,
into the compact’s pool, and see
my face hanging down from the bottom of my face,
like a raft woven of popsicle sticks,
my nursing-home neck,
then, though I’m willing to age and die
for there to be sex and children,
the slackness of the drapery, and the
inside-out pockets of the jowls shock me.
I thought it wouldn’t go so far with me
that I would be geology,
my throat a rippling of synclines and anticlines
back when the crust was warm, and I
was hot. Secretly, I don’t know yet
that I’m not, but I bow my head to time,
and count my withered chins, three five seven
nine, my muses, my truth which is not
beauty—my crone beauty, in its first youth.
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