By Claire Schwartz
You learn to recognize beauty by its frame.
In the gilded hall, in the gilded frame, her milky neck
extended as she peers over the drawn bath. A target,
a study, a lesson: she requires you
to be beautiful. You should save her, no matter the price.
No matter the price, the Collector will take it. His collection makes him
good, when he lends the woman’s image
to the museum, where schoolchildren stand
before it, anointed with lessons in color and feeling. Pay
attention, the teacher scolds the fidgeter in back. Bad,
the child whose movement calls to her own beauty, the child
whose wails insist his mother is most beautiful of all. Eyes this way,
the teacher syrups. All that grows, rots. Good little stillnesses,
guardians-to-be. If you are good, one day
an embossed invitation will arrive at the door of the house
you own. You will sit next to the Collector, light
chattering along the chandeliers, your napkin shaped like a swan.
To protect your silk, you snap its neck with flourish. The blood, beautiful,
reddening your cheeks as you slip into the chair drawn just for you. Sit, the
chair says
to the patron. Stand, to the guard. The guard shifts on blistered feet. She
loves you,
she loves you not. The children pluck the daisy bald,
discard their little suns in the gutter.
Source: Poetry (November 2019)
Poet Bio
More Poems about Activities
We Play Charades
My first instinct is to translate
the word. Make it easier to understand
without saying the word itself.
I feel guilt for this mistake—
for changing languages instead
of describing. Isn’t this an easy way out?
My mother and I are playing charades
alone. We make this...
Here’s an Ocean Tale
My brother still bites his nails to the quick,
but lately he’s been allowing them to grow.
So much hurt is forgotten with the horizon
as backdrop. It comes down to simple math.
The beach belongs to none of us, regardless
of color, or money....
More Poems about Arts & Sciences
Poem with Human Intelligence
This century is younger than me.
It dresses itself
in an overlong coat of Enlightenment thinking
despite the disappearing winter.
It twirls the light-up fidget spinner
won from the carnival of oil economies.
In this century, chatbots write poems
where starlings wander from their murmuration
into the denim-thick...
Listening in Deep Space
We've always been out looking for answers,
telling stories about ourselves,
searching for connection, choosing
to send out Stravinsky and whale song,
which, in translation, might very well be
our undoing instead of a welcome.
We launch satellites, probes, telescopes
unfolding like origami, navigating
geomagnetic storms, major disruptions.
Rovers...
More Poems about Religion
From the Sky
When I die,
bury me in the sky—
no one is fighting over it.
Children are playing soccer
with empty bomb shells
(from the sky I can see them).
A grandmother is baking
her Eid makroota and mamoul
(from the sky I can taste them).
Teens are writing love...
Being
Wake up, greet the sun, and pray.
Burn cedar, sweet grass, sage—
sacred herbs to honor the lives we’ve been given,
for we have been gifted these ways since the beginning of time.
Remember, when you step into the arena of your life,
think about...