PARVENU

Posted by Admin on 25 January 2009, 12:00 am

Though one of four, her bulk
unbalanced the quartet –
recalled a ribald song
about a woman’s girth
that sailors used to sing.
An outsized rear, with front
to match, balloon-like filled
a primrose coat and made
her footling footwear, jade
and flimsy, seem to be
inadequate a base,
a Tenniel’s Duchess head
with copper-tinted gold
upwound from nape; a face
cosmeticised in vain,
its blue-ringed bulging eyes
a ludicrous mistake.
Nor did her vivid lips,
all one with ox-blood nails,
with artifice improve
what could not be redeemed.
A parvenu, I guessed,
as peacock-proud she stood,
her chronograph, a quartz
alarm, symbolic in
its quality of what
she’d never be.