Beneath the Beautiful

Finding out the pills I took

For lovely skin have caused

A hundred thousand babies to be born

With bulging heads, no nose, hands webbed,

I pick up a fashion magazine.

The cover smiles in her airbrushed

Perfection. Her breasts bulge from a sequinned gown.

According to my family she is pretty,

Therefore morally correct.

I was brought up with the God

Of surfaces, a deity of

Mere fact over truth.

This God loved the swimming pool and Ph.D.'s

And skill at hurting children.

I sit wearing glasses

And sloppy jeans, not bothering to hide

A pimple on my left cheek.

I am trying to heal.

But I know I still judge worthiness by cheekbones,

Leather pants and platinum hair.

Long legs make me grit my teeth.

I am intimidated by symmetry

And scorn a kind man who loves me.

I want to close my eyes, disarm

This most misleading sense,

To hear the conversation of the shore rocks

And the lake, to breathe the air

Too clean and cold to have a smell.

And when my eyes have been silent long enough,

I want to open them to higher speech.

I will stare at one tan rock,

Speckled with a melody of grey and lighter grey,

And probe until I reach its core,

What lies cratered beneath a surface

Hard, like my defenses.