ManicDDaily

dVerse Poets Pub has a poetics prompt based on Fernando Botero this week (hosted by Victoria C. Slotto.)

I like Botero’s images (one of which I’ve adapted above), but every time I thought of writing a poem about one, I pictured a person being swallowed by their own flesh.  Instead I’m opting for an older poem about other (more traditional) flesh-favoring artists:

Courbet

All I can say is that
it’s a good thing we have museums
hanging Courbets,
Rubens,
Rembrandts,
the occasional Italian,
with their depictions of swelling bellies,
dimples gathered around spines, flesh rippling
like Aphrodite’s birth foam,
the creep of pubic hair juxtaposed by coy hands
whose curved digits
pudge, slightly sunken cheeks (above, below),
spidery blood vessels
rooting beneath the patina. 
All I can say, as I catch
my face in the glass,
glance down at my folio
of torso, is that
it’s a good thing. 

(This is from my collection of poems, Going on Somewhere.  Check it out!   Also check out my new comic novel–Nose Dive,  a fun look at truth, beauty and the pursuit of harmony–available in paperback and on Kindle for just 99 cents!)