An irregular ode to Christina Rossetti’s Goblin Market
Bones of stars
hang from glittering billboards
incessantly stabbed with slivers of light.
Sephora of Exodus
Avon’s Avalon
city whisper
a bakery hologram suspended in gloss:
Lickable, kissable suds and scrubs.
Tubs of thick vanilla cream,
pure as a unicorn.
Red Velvet Cake bubbles
precious as blood.
Honey Harvest body balm,
Satin Sugar bath cubes,
tablets, salts and pearls.
Sugar lychee soda loaded shampoo.
Tried and true body dew.
Minty Moisture Milk,
Marbled Brownie Mousse.
Pink Grapefruit Smoother
Chocolate body glosser,
Bliss powdered sugar shimmer,
sprinkle over Jujube Rejuvinist.
Frothing threesome:
Candy Apple, Cherry Snow Cone, Cotton Candy cream.
Each peach for
sweet cheeks.
Virgin oil de cocoa dream,
Devil’s Food frosting,
the only Emperor is the Emperor of Ice Cream.
Evening by evening,
among the rush hour traffic
Flora held her stomach in
Fizzy craved fantastic.
Sloughing off the ice trays
of green light
swallowed sallow skin
requires a cherry scented cream
that Fizzy must rub in.
Flora dreams of when she will
wear size twos again, and how
dear Fizzy might avoid
fudge rippled cellulite sin.
The billboards bulge!
Poke guilty pudge.
Bilge water damage
drains liverish crud
onto Fizzy’s shoes.
With fasting thoughts and christening mops,
With glistening beaks and tight cropped tops.
‘Diet Coke,’ Flora said,
tilting her peroxide head:
We must not lapse
and lose our will --
a spritz of chocolate orange could fill.
Bare your wrist, let’s get in line
tonight at Smoothie King we’ll dine.
The streets are filled with women’s eyes
lined in emerald blue and dyed hair to match their
pubic mound. The women do not look each other
in the eye but scan their size. Compare skins, nails, breasts
and thighs.
Fizzy isn’t satisfied,
while Flora roams the countryside (in her mind)
the natural look she saw on a billboard,
she thinks she’d like to try.
At home the magazines stack up:
Elle, Allure, Glamour, Mademoiselle.
Ads thrust abs, asses.
Anonymous breasts
peep through tissue dresses.
Are we meant to wear them? Flora wonders
Fizzy cracks a tub of crème’ brulee and plunders.
Like a rush- filled strobe lit dance floor
Like an heiress from the north
Like two blondes (the brownie kind)
baked till gold
for awful kings,
the sisters make a pact to starve
but feed their skins with yummy things.
Becoming concupiscent cupcakes
for others to enjoy,
is possible.
Fizzy’s will-power, a magic of divine
ignorance, holding its breath,
corsetting hunger,
transcending the dull pudding of earth,
an angel of sugar crystals and filmy resonance
dessert-ed her.
Odorous indeed must be the greed
that unleashes such a beast.
Flora watched Fizzy pace
inside the clutches of an
ornate mirror. Her face a blur,
shrinking Fizzy could not see
the edges of a soulless sea
had come to swallow her
whole.
Flora saw where Fizzy stood
clawed the frame of carven golden wood.
Slapped the mocking sliver face
that claims the truth but tells a lie
the mirror place of fat and thin
of ugly bitch and you should die
rather than be fat.
Hairless Flora tried her best.
Fizzy lost herself and cast
a shadow of her need
within the mirror
hidden, dark and beaten.
Distorting her forever.
Flora tried to reach inside
and pull dear Fizzy into
life and shop and buy and
shop and buy.
But Fizzy fell into a dream
that cannot be and does not seem.
Reflected wraith of
sister past.
For there is no friend
like obsession
to swallow your eyes
and put away your face
in heated malls and
air conditioned offices
numb in it all
it is not matter
where you stand.
To explore analysis of the original poem:
https://deadbutdreaming.wordpress.com/2016/09/26/goblin-market/