Old French prostitute from the 1940s reflecting on her life and longings
lyrics
Full Bodied
Come. Consider this flesh:
the stretches of birth, its
wears of freckles, its
firm marks.
How grand. How decadent.
How I could be large enough
for a deity: the breasts of
Buddha, and belly of the
Villendorf Venus.
Call me Circe of the crossroads
with a whole West Side Story
dipping across the shadows of this,
my turf—
docks, dance halls & warehouses,
the angelic street toughs, the scurrying
from swallows, those cops, with a taste
of wine & cigs still thick in my mouth.
I open it, an accordion. What tunes,
what tales swoop through there
where such brawls took place & they
had to nail the tables down?
Now I’m a pantheress, now a true stud,
equestrian with Latrec’s Paris, Chagall’s
lovers entwined about my baubles, the many
rings of my fingers, pearls about the neck.
They are gleaming fresh again from the ancient
pursuit——
fascination in a gasp, a look, this intimate refuge
from the boulevard’s tango, its harbor of
uncloaked silks, tossed away caps, unbuttoned
zoot suits.
What’s in the background? Mirrors, Notre Dame,
the hiss of cesspools being washed.
I recall only sighs, the passage of francs, being
“fallen” but thinking, “Well, it’s a life”, while
dreaming I was beyond the songs of Edith Piaf,
more of a Mahalia Jackson really, with a voice
huge as Africa, and spiritual, spiritual.
A resident of NY, Stephen Mead is a published outsider artist, writer, maker of short-collage films and sound-collage
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