Today: What is Sexy
Construction worker
with two long French braids,
sexy.
Woman in high-waisted
jeans, white t-shirt,
plain sandals,
sexy.
City sidewalks,
in general.
Breeze,
warm.
Rainbow heart
Pride sticker
on the sidewalk,
sexy.
Having the door
held at the coffee shop.
Tiny portions of food
at the coffee shop,
sexy.
The restraint
cancelling out the lack
of generosity.
The iron gate
around
the dry cleaner’s,
sexy.
The black glossy paint,
tipped with fussy,
thornish fleur-de-lis.
The pot of periwinkle
hydrangeas,
huge haphazard
balls of blooms,
sexy.
Woman with gray hair,
tangerine shorts, tan legs,
jay-walking,
sexy.
Two people walking
ahead of me in culottes.
The impulse to react
against skinny jeans.
Dizzy in
the revolving door.
Ducking into the
open green room
to put on mascara.
Green room in low light.
Someone practicing piano
on a dark stage.
Building that holds
the ghosts of dances
choreographed
in basement studios,
sexy.
Suites of offices
on the upper floors,
not.
Stepping into
a crowded
elevator,
no.
And finally,
arriving
at my desk.
That’s not
sexy.
But the view
from the window—
the Forbidden River,
calling.
Mythological Rape Painting
I hate this stuff, that the rapist is a god is such a boring
part of the story. The gods are fucking with us, that’s
the moral? Our hands in the air as we’re grabbed
from behind. No one rides a horse in the nude, and still,
it’s not an invitation. I don’t want to look at the fat half orbs
of our breasts trying to leap out of the scene, our voluminous
hair flying behind and whipping together with Zeus’s
aggressive curls. The horse has a horn, which really, we get it.
Our faces held to the canvases of rape paintings
in museums all over the world. We wouldn’t have missed it
anyway, our destiny. Bearing children, demigods, who will
ruin and be ruined by the world in equal measure.
