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for Annetta
Why isn't it enough for anyone
just to be desired?
The adopted child,
fought for, chosen,
brought home
to be loved,
never loses the feeling
that they were first
unwanted,
it stays their whole life
in the flesh
indelibly,
like a Holocaust tattoo.
Isn't it enough to know
that your body still does it for me?
Sends chemistry coursing
through my veins
displacing my sense
of space and time,
invisible shockwaves
shaking me
awake.
As a post-script to one of our regular
misunderstandings,
I need to ask,
Isn't being desired all most people
ever really want?
I can think of a hundred ways
they twist themselves in knots,
risk anesthesia,
the surgeon's needle and scalpel
to be sculpted
to be stared at
like an objet d'art
(please don't touch).
You smile doubtfully,
scoff at crudeness
and immodesty, as if wanting
to be desired were rude,
like an idiot who revs a flashy sports car
for attention, a show-off
decked in baubles and luxury brands
so people will talk -
if you can't be the object of desire
at least own one
and maybe it'll rub off -
entire industries are built on it,
cultures too.
You're a recycler,
a lover of the well-worn,
the previously bought,
the lightly used,
the vintage,
prowl the aisles for bargains
to resell, find new homes
for the unwanted,
your eye undeniable for
the gentle curve of depression glass,
rectangular Pyrex,
etched serving plates
with the residue of family meals
still on them, stains
of the past baked
into corners.
Desire is a starting point,
beneath every tattoo
a meaning.
2 comments:
Although not normally a big fan of tattoos, this poem got me thinking about them. It brought to mind the movie "Memento" wherein the main character suffers from amnesia and he tattoos himself in order to remind himself of things he needs to remember. I guess a tattoo is the ultimate memory device. Then I thought about T.S. Eliot's line in "The Wasteland" about "mixing memory and desire," and your poem kind of tropes on that idea, doesn't it? And finally I am thinking about the later stage in life (that I am perhaps in myself) when desire is no longer overwhelming and overpowering, when after being stretched and weakened and numbed over the years, it is no longer the force that it once was, at which point desire itself becomes a memory.
Btw, are you familiar with the Janis Ian song "Tattoo"?
I don't know the Janis Ian song - will definitely check it out. I wasn't thinking about the connection about memory per se but more about desire, which is visceral. It's not really memory in the sense of a phenomena of the mind, but rather chemistry, more like an imprint, ink in the flesh, as it were. But as you mention it, yes I guess there is something wistful about the poem's tone, which I hadn't considered. Not a looking back at waning desire, just the opposite, in fact, the way that wanting to be desired stays with us, it's 'all everybody ever really wants' (to be wanted, sexually or otherwise.) So I'd say that it remains a potent force all our lives, just transformed.
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