Your mother was alluring in the nude.
I say this because you left the photo
album on the table.
Did shyness overcome her
when she picked up the pics
at the Fotomat?
We are the only creatures, clothed.
All the others haven’t a stitch
and we say we are enlightened.
All of us are naked in the shower.
I don’t mean at once, in the same stall.
Just the thought will make us wince.
Back to the point about the clothing.
Do the children who sew for a pittance
make it moral?
Was the cotton picked to the lash
the sign of some godly purity?
Woman is whom God should have made
in the beginning.
A more admirable name
for each animal.
Someone the Lord
would not have said no to
regarding the leaves and fruit of trees.
I plucked the olives from the salad
and that made it less than Greek.
I retained the blocks of feta
and considered German-Jew.
It’s been an oxymoron
since nineteen-thirty-three.
Bring me beer from Bavaria
and hot latkes from the slum.
I’ll gladly show you
what can and can’t go together.
A frown is a smile
standing on its head.
Feet are a pair of hands
unwilling to clasp in prayer.
Toes are cognisant
that fingers are more lovely—
so they never stretch for the sky.
Unable to offer light of its own,
the moon is but a mirror for the sun
in which to worship its own reflection.
What is ugly, anyway?
Is it the absence of beauty
or too much of it all at once?
Andreas Gripp
April 4, 2023
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