better than that inaugural poem, don't you think?

[pachamama.livejournal.com]

Tomato
by Elizabeth Alexander

My friend Amy has a jones for pregnant women,
wants to fan their flushed faces, pull out chairs for them,
carry parasols above them in strong sunlight,
fix figs with mascarpone for the calcium and iron.

I long to be the rosy, pregnant woman people flock to,
hear other women's chattering wisdom, tales:
a sister whose teeth fell out from too many babies,
milk that spurts across the room at any cry.
Her hair went curly. Her hair went straight.
Her face erupted in red sprinkles.
How are you eating? What are you dreaming?
Dream of strawberries, the baby will have rashes.

And then one night I dream of Susan Sarandon.
She's a radiant red tomato in a straw sun hat,
digging in the rows of her organic garden patch,
a million months pregnant,

and her lover is feeding her chocolate, square by square.

Comments

[tx-cronopio.livejournal.com]

Not my kind of poem, but really, anything was better than that inaugural poem :)