Vox Populi
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Sandy Solomon: My Friend Seems Near Tears
My friend seems near tears over a man
she’s just visited in another city.
Probably he didn’t want to see her—
no bear hugs in the kitchen anymore,
no walks with locked arms, no casual kisses.
She says she feels fat and ugly, assuming
the fault is hers and that it’s in her body:
something she swallowed, like responsibility;
something she must remember, like, first thing
each day, to shower, curl reluctant hair,
shade the angles of the face again, and dress
so as not to draw attention or cause offense.
I want to shake her to free her of such lessons
as she sits hunched and strangely quieted
across the booth, stirring her coffee too much.
Look at her, so tall and beautiful
when she forgets herself, her whole body
lit with a sloppy, ungovernable brightness,
enthusiasm that doesn’t know its place.
Even in despair, it gives itself away,
throwing the mannered order of her face:
one eye tinted perfectly, the other smudged
because she got to talking and forgot and rubbed.
Copyright 1996 Sandy Solomon. From Pears, Lake, Sun (Pitt, 1996).
Sandy Solomon’s poems have appeared in The New Yorker, The Virginia Quarterly Review, The Gettysburg Review, and elsewhere. She teaches at Vanderbilt.
Vox Populi 
“her whole body
lit with a sloppy, ungovernable brightness,
enthusiasm that doesn’t know its place”—
Oh!
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So good!
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Oh, Sandy is terrific!
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And if the body shows my life—the breaking and taking, the giving and living, I prize it for its imperfections. The breast that fed my children now on the chopping block for welcoming a murderous visitor. The skin, now mottled, the voice softened and husky, bell muted. I will love it. And perhaps somewhere a man with his own badges and scars who sees the beauty in the ancient stone, the weathered tree.
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What a lovely prose poem, Barbara.
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“when she forgets herself, her whole body
lit with a sloppy, ungovernable brightness,
enthusiasm that doesn’t know its place.”
Just lovely.
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yes, Sandy’s poems have a crafted elegance and an understated emotion.
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