Nyla Matuk: Manifesto
MANIFESTO
For Kate Block
Schiaparelli with a shoe: Prada with a cigar?
In scandalous blouse and bonnet, Picasso’s Dora Maar
blossoming as a shoe or bicycle?
Schiap’s hat made of shoes, to sit on a woman’s
head, saying, It’s her fault if she is ugly—only
herself to blame, and her progress is a recycled
Enlightenment. After a fashion, entitlement.
Dampening of excitement: upon the curly volute, atop
columns of mens’ architectures, the baroque encroached.
The honey-coloured ramparts of Anne Gregory’s hair
a disguise more authentic than any lobster
dress devised, or slip-shod apparati…
economy of pincered corsetery worn on shellfish dentata,
a gripping, headstrong stepping stone—
the problem of a single-plane distortion is the problem
of Woman. Never loved for herself alone.
Nyla Matuk, from Stranger, Vehicule Press, 2012. Posted with permission from the press.