The Line

Sarah Karlinsky

when did a curve become a straight line?
when did noses become plastic
when did skin become
beautiful only when cut
and stapled when did
doctors become sculptors
and when did women being
to look through squinty
eyes hating each other
behind crazy masks of
base and blush and ten
thousand worthless creams
and when did diet pills
become the only candy
and when did lips become
exciting only when pumped full
of collagen and when did the words
that came out become unimportant so
long as the teeth were straight and
white and why does everyone
agree when I say beauty shouldn't
be a pre-pubescent girl with taped
on tits, nine feet tall with a too
huge mouth but then people sit down to
poke at legs with snarling fingers
and laugh at faces worn down with age
and agree that the girl with too
many curves will never find love
and the girl with a swan's neck and
scarecrow arms breathes only to spite
them and I see people who misread
their hunger in a thousand different
ways, life dribbling out of their
dying mouths to feed the toilet and
flush away whatever was left of a
human being who almost had a chance
to love herself before she opened
a magazine or turned on the t.v.
to be swept up into a never ending
war that she couldn't possibly win
because as all smart women grow to realize,
you can never be too young or too thin

Go home!