To: All the Girls

[Polar Bear]

For me, this poem works because it bothers me. The metaphors speak well and the narrative mirrors my own grief at aging and and life as a species designed to focus on appearances. I don't think I'll take aging gracefully.

I enjoy your novel use of the semicolon and colon in your repeating structure but I also feel it may be too liberal. I'm not suggesting this because the semicolon is out of vogue these days; I'm a fan (although my usage is borderline illiterate).

To all the girls
Tight skinned
Primed; ripe and ready
Teeth: white
Straight eyed
We equal, yet I find you more than me
Everywhere, dazzling
Twinkling, before me
Whatever will we do, when the gazes fade?
Like yesterdays headliner, damp, tattered on the pavement
All the strife and worry put upon the ripe fruit
Hands anticipating with mouths open, ready for the reaping
Only and always to fall, rolling down the hill
Forgot and left to rot
So to all the girls
Primped and pearly
Pure; picked and open
Skin: soft and naked
Eyes: wrought and sunken
Never mind the world or the hopes it beholds
Your fire: volcanic and teeming
Since birth and oblivion
Time will show the cracks and burns
And the dysmorphic body turns