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Classic and Contemporary Poetry
THE SAGA OF THE SMALL-BREASTED WOMAN, by KAREN SWENSON Poet's Biography First Line: A prepuberty owl with popcorn Last Line: Delights in dumplings at the feast. Subject(s): Beauty; Breasts; Women | |||
A prepuberty owl with popcorn Saturday afternoons I focused my glasses on Jane Russell's D cup in the dark believing in the inevitability of big breasts my constitutional right to deep cleavage that nature and nationality would provide. But at sixteen my coming-of-age was a pair of custard cups which my mother packed carefully in cotton as though they were a set of incubating eggs and I nested them in my bra praying to Jane to Marilyn to all the cinema saints. At twenty I gave up screened goddesses threw out the wadding envied every woman who could plump pillows over the top of her bra and took to Chinese necklines, slit skirts - I started legging it through life: But with forty closing in I retain the trauma of the mammary fantasies of the American male. A pioneer in my Conestoga wagon of womanhood I search for a man who, gratified at some quenching birthright bosom, delights in dumplings at the feast. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...ARISTOTLE TO PHYLLIS by JOHN HOLLANDER A WOMAN'S DELUSION by SUSAN HOWE JULIA TUTWILER STATE PRISON FOR WOMEN by ANDREW HUDGINS THE WOMEN ON CYTHAERON by ROBINSON JEFFERS TOMORROW by ANNA LETITIA BARBAULD LADIES FOR DINNER, SAIPAN by KENNETH KOCH GOODBYE TO TOLERANCE by DENISE LEVERTOV |
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