CW: Alcohol
The artist said you look like a tit,
said, I won’t do no tit tattoo.
He sketched an imposing crag,
all jagged peaks and plunges.
And it was impressive,
the majesty of mountaineering
distilled to two dimensions,
but it wasn’t you.
Thanks, I said.
I’ll think about it.
When I look at you,
sun spilling down your sides,
I think of the woman
glimpsed from across the bar.
She was drinking beer
when a joke sent an amber wave
rolling past her lips,
over her clavicle,
down the exposed slope of her chest.
How lovely the mountain.
How lovely the tit.
How lovely the artist,
firm in his conviction,
offering his professional advice
and coming up short.
Frances Klein is a disabled poet and high school English teacher. She was born and raised in Southeast Alaska. She has been published in So it Goes: The Literary Journal of the Vonnegut Memorial Library and Tupelo Press, among others. Readers can find more of her work at https://kleinpoetryblog.wordpress.com/