Thanks to those of you who've been posting comments or sending them directly to my email inbox. I appreciate them, and I keep track of them for revisions.
Tonight, I fixed a cup of Market Spice tea, sprawled on my office floor with a beat up paperback copy of Sappho's poems, and, for some reason, started thinking about eyebrows and their origins.
(Note: I just finished deleting a rather long-winded excuse for how I can relate Sappho to eyebrows in seven easy thoughts. It was rubbish. Suffice it to say I just wasn't paying attention to my reading when I wrote this poem.)
EYEBROWS
In my dream I’m lying
on an operating table
and God is standing over me,
thinking, stroking the beard
behind his surgical mask.
Ladies? he says, I’m having trouble
with the eyebrows.
And three winged women
hover behind him,
thinking, fists on their hips.
One says, I liked the pine boughs.
Another says, no,
they were a little too festive.
The third asks, what’s wrong
with the fishing lures?
God turns and rummages through
a silver bin beside me,
pulls out two baby barn owls
the color of pepper shakers.
They squirm gently in his hands
but seem too sleepy to protest.
Ah ha! God says.
He tilts his head, pops a kink
in his neck and leans down
over my forehead.
The women nudge each other
and nod their heads
as if to point at everything,
God, his bin, the owls, and me.
...
Tonight, I fixed a cup of Market Spice tea, sprawled on my office floor with a beat up paperback copy of Sappho's poems, and, for some reason, started thinking about eyebrows and their origins.
(Note: I just finished deleting a rather long-winded excuse for how I can relate Sappho to eyebrows in seven easy thoughts. It was rubbish. Suffice it to say I just wasn't paying attention to my reading when I wrote this poem.)
EYEBROWS
In my dream I’m lying
on an operating table
and God is standing over me,
thinking, stroking the beard
behind his surgical mask.
Ladies? he says, I’m having trouble
with the eyebrows.
And three winged women
hover behind him,
thinking, fists on their hips.
One says, I liked the pine boughs.
Another says, no,
they were a little too festive.
The third asks, what’s wrong
with the fishing lures?
God turns and rummages through
a silver bin beside me,
pulls out two baby barn owls
the color of pepper shakers.
They squirm gently in his hands
but seem too sleepy to protest.
Ah ha! God says.
He tilts his head, pops a kink
in his neck and leans down
over my forehead.
The women nudge each other
and nod their heads
as if to point at everything,
God, his bin, the owls, and me.
...
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