You think you’re all choked-throat hot in your black fishnets, lace-corseted cleavage,
misty aura bargain perfume: Siren to Depression.
Propped like a dime store goddess on your liquid pedestal commanding frailtyto its bloodied knees, your plastic lashes,shadowed eyes; greens, purples,the bluest blues only Billie Holiday could singinto lonely hearts, crushed libido, beat-up hope.
Oh, impostor, in your body-fitting mini hiked to your crotch, you invite a handup your skirt; nothing’s there.
Bottom-shelf bargain, you are no match for me.
Really now, do you think Ares or Adonis would
ever fall for your guile-goating abuse?
Would Botticelli ever waste his precious oils?
Poem by Catherine Arra
Image by Adam Strong
Catherine Arra is a native of the Hudson Valley in upstate New York, where she lives with wildlife and changing seasons until winter, when she migrates to the Space Coast of Florida. Arra teaches part-time and facilitates local writing groups. She is the author of four full-length collections and four chapbooks. Recent work appears in Thimble Literary Magazine, Origami Poems Project, Stone Circle Review, Unleashed Lit., Anti-Heroin Chic, Unbroken, and Impspired. Find her at www.catherinearra.com
Backwards Trajectory 