National Poetry Month : Mia Morgan,

 

This isn’t what EM Forster intended

There are beautiful people kissing

leaning on cars in dusky 1988 parking lots,

and beautiful people hanging out of

italian windows are laughing at me.

Beautiful people represent something

that I think I would have believed in

hanging from those windows leaning

on those cars if I myself were beautiful.

Beautiful people never have to shave

their hairy legs and armpits or worry

about clipping fingernails evenly and

filing away the rough snagging edges.

Beautiful people can never truly get dirty.

It’s said their skin is so beautiful that

everything seems intentional even filth

and only accidents are dirty.

Only beautiful people are allowed

to say beautiful profound things and

only then because things are made

more beautiful by the act of being said.

When beautiful people lean over the

sides of boats to kiss on the neck

the water always settles just so fine

on eyelashes like little salted diamonds.

Mia Morgan is a Palestinian-Canadian writer and co-founder of Coven Editions small press. Her long poem Suburbia was published as a tiny book in by In/Words press, and you can find more work in Bywords, talking about strawberries, and some other places. She is a member of & co. collective and the Arc Poetry Magazine board.