Big

by Rhonda J. Nelson

 

The story doesn't begin when the little man peeks
through the dressing room curtain,
sees her open thighs warm/soft/round.
Even though this isn't a beginning, he looks.

She is a woman of color,
mostly blue.
He hopes to nibble at the pink/brown.
Gold, his hair

so foreign to the green/blue of her large
mouth which could swallow him like a fish,
head still attached.

He could float with her in a big sky. Cloud girl.
No one has told her this in fifty pounds.

She looks down her triple E's.
He buzzes like a fly.
Next to the hibiscus curtain
his eye slit reflects mirror reflecting eye.

She doesn't see, doesn't know.
He explodes with mother sister
warm/soft/round in Sunday dress,
smelling like gingerbread,
Ohio home, butter blessed.

He comes and goes,
they never meet.
She leaves with empty arms
finding nothing that flatters her.

 

©2005 Rhonda J. Nelseon

Rhonda J. Nelson is the winner of Writers Exchange 2000, sponsored by Poets & Writers, Inc. (NY), a Florida Division of Cultural Affairs Fellow for year 2000-2001, a two-time recipient of the Hillsborough County Arts Council Emerging Artist award, and recent recipient of Hillsborough County Arts Council Individual Artist Award. Her collections include: Musical Chair (Anhinga Press, 2004), The Undertow (Rattapallax Press, 2001), and Shadows & Light (Tampa Bay Review Press, 1991). Her poems have been published in journals such as: Slipstream, The Panhandler, Survivor Magazine, Asheville Review, Apalachee Review, The Pedestal Magazine, Book of Hope, The Dexter Review, New CollAge, and Sandhill Review, among others. She is the poet/artistic director for Irritable Tribe of Poets, a collective of instrumentalists and spoken-word artists who perform improvisational music, actively mixing jazz, rock, funk and world-music textures with sundry styles of poetry. Rhonda's solo cd project with the band, titled Kahlo, contains twelve narrative pieces on the life and art of Mexican painter, Frida Kahlo.