After Listening to an Open Mic Poetry Reading, I Write a Poem Inspired by George Herbert' "Jordan"

Painting by Johannes Vermeer


AFTER LISTENING TO AN OPEN MIC POETRY READING,
I WRITE A POEM INSPIRED BY GEORGE HERBERT' "JORDAN"

Who says that girls with brass globes bored
Into the middle of their snake-like tongues
And girls with their heads shaved bald
Are the only fit subjects
for postmodern love poems?
Is there no longer any attraction to a body
That is not mutilated with rings and tattoos?
Is there no longer any beauty
in a Vermeer face,
Or a Botticelli Venus arising among flung roses
Of a white-capped sea to stand
on a scallop shell?
Must Venus have a bouquet of roses
tattooed on her ass?
Is all good structure, a termite-eaten,
collapsing stair?
Must one only speak once-tabooed,
Meaningless, monosyllabic words
To express the intricacies
and profundities of love?
Who states this new aesthetics? Is it
The high school teacher with a paper tiger
Tattooed seven inches about her ankle?
Or was it the spaced-out college professor
With a pink knee peeping out
of torn blue jeans?
Or the old, lickspittle professor
trying to be au courant
And be liked by the hoi polloi?
I say, "No." I go back to Italy
To touch magpie shadows on a bare shoulder
As we sip Campari
among olive trees and poppies.


Duane Locke

Posted over on Storymania