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On my campus walk a spring effusion of spaghetti straps, and--Madonna's legacy--the inside outed, too delicate for the name of straps, tender, silky bra linguine, tomato-red, celery-green, slipping off creamy shoulders, or tangling fetchingly with those spaghetti straps my daughter informs me, I, as an older woman, can not wear. Once, unwittingly, I draped my navy blazer on the chairback in my class; two pale pink shoulder pads plopped up like obscene pincushions from the costumer's shop, abruptly spotlit. The student they tickled apologized, but couldn't stop laughing each time he looked. Now I pull my jacket around me, though it's hot, thinking suddenly of Madame Goldfarb's Foundation, Lingerie and Prosthesis Shoppe, where my mother bought her ordinary bras, and how the saleswoman-- discussing shoulder welts, back strain--lifted her breast into the cup the way the technician lifts mine unto the plate for my mammogram, or the butcher cups the roast he's about to weigh, thinking of how my mother's hidden back and breasts even into her ninth decade-- compared with her wizened arms and face--were shockingly alluring, olive smooth, unblemished, as I helped her into the hospital gown From Light Lowering in Diminished Sevenths; first published in The Evansville Review 12 (2002). |