ASPIRATIONS
How we long to excise peasant fat
As Gloucester fishermen slice the cod,
Lifting flesh cleanly off the bone,
Sculpting ourselves to aristocratic
Skeletons: ballet dancers under the skin.
And wear our heart lines open to view
Like silk-embroidered Persian shields
Or manzanitas whose bronze branches,
Coated with smooth-meshed capillaries,
Have cast off the armor of bark.
We dive into surf to be tossed and tumbled
By breakers and scoured on washboard sand:
Bottles and granite together giving up
The cutting edge, the obdurate mass,
Emerging as sea glass and luminous gemstones.
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