Neoclassical, Romantic, and Symbolist Sculpture Pavilion

– The Getty Museum, Los Angeles, April 2014

NITPICKER

by Eileen Walsh Duncan

Good god, naked bodies

in a fussified setting.

Posed like selfies, in bronze and stone.

Every surface seems strokable, lickable.

This is an ongoing problem, per the docent’s frown.

So I obey the signs rather than instinct.

But I can look invasively.

According to this display, the human form

is all muscles that tense and flow.

Nary a dollop of cellulite.

Although I spy some belly butter

and rounds of cheek cheese, in contrast

to today’s digital vernacular of height and bone.

In the center of the room,

bronze man is on a pedestal so his crotch

is just above my head. Who planned this?

I peer at his little toe.

The docent shifts, peers at me.

That last joint, ballast for all the burgeoning going on,

for spins into a dramatic exit, for wavering in a stance,

for lurching when drunk.

The tip pressed for years so hard it curls down,

the nail almost hidden. Like mine.

Every statue in that place had the crumple-toe.

I checked. The docent watched.

Bodies to be worshipped, spiraling up

in carnate deliciousness from a somewhat

vestigial-looking digit.

As if in silent collusion each sculptor leaves

a smirk to puncture perfection –

There now. For you. Go on home.

Eileen Walsh Duncan’s work recently appeared in Alaska Quarterly Review, Pleasure Boat Studio’s zine Lights, Ramblr Online, the anthology Rewilding: Poems for the Environment, and the city of Shoreline’s Voices in the Forest installation. She received the Bentley Award from Seattle Review, and has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize.