Negotiable Beauty

That’s what she was, what she thought of herself.  That: the title—negotiable beauty, looks for 
sale.  She was a work of art, all right.

And she was full-service, the whole act.  She figured out what you needed and provided it, an 
engulfing fantasy, a gestalt of lies.  What you never got, what no one ever got, was her, the real 
person, the core creation.  After a while she never got that either.  Maybe it didn’t exist.  

I only knew what she showed me:  the candied apple, the Tunnel of Love, The Wild Mouse, 
thespunsugarcorndogdietcokediet, the whole nonnutritive unsustainable Emotional Carnival.  
Did I mention the House of Mirrors?

She showed me mes I didn’t know I had.  She showed me who I could be:  A wreck of 
dependency, jealousy, and lust, spending whatever sacrifice it took for an hour… a look… a  
mouth.

A month.  A month to move from a preoccupation with sex to fantasies of violence; from 
screwing to striking, then confusing the two.

Time only ends.
Copyright © | Year Posted 2005

Poem

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