(no subject)

[silverflurry.livejournal.com]

Page 34 / if your complexion is a mess
Harryette Mullen

if your complexion is a mess
our elixir spells skin success
you'll have appeal bewitch be adored
hechizando con crema dermoblanqueadora

what we sell is enlightenment
nothing less than beauty itself
since when can be seen in the dark
what shines hidden in dirt

double dutch darky
take kisses back to Africa
they dipped you in a vat
at the wacky chocolate factory

color we've got in spades
melanin gives perpetual shade
through rhythm's no answer to cancer
pancakes pale and butter can get rancid

Comments

[sylphbranching.livejournal.com]

i think i'm missing something about the rhythm in this poem. it seems like it would work if it was very rhythmic, but when i read it, it seems very unrhythmic, changing rhythms constantly...some lines have 3 and some have 4 beats, but even when the number of beats matches, the meter is too unrhythmic for me to read it well as beat verse...