Mannequins

The mannequins in Weaver’s windows

wear form-fitting swimsuits in hot colors

with a lot of plastic showing.

Their perfect pale thighs are smooth and cylindrical

like cigarettes

and their joined thoraxes

cloned slender.

While on the sidewalk wander women whose bodies are more varied.

There is some heft in some of their jeans.

Folds of flesh spill over lines of tight cloth.

There are dimples and ripples

where most might prefer skin to be taut. 

Often their faces are not lopsided,

but they are hardly symmetrically fine.

I will not pretend that I don’t stare at dazzling Venus

more than the light bulb over my garage.

But the eyes of the mannequins

not only do not follow me around the sidewalk,

they look positively painted on.

I would fear if one winked.

But the shapeshifters in my mind would lead me

to look death in their molded mindless perfection.

And there are also Venuses,

with eyes like fire and skin and lines

like Plato’s very ideal form of woman’s body

walking along, drawing my gaze on this side of the glass,

to be sure.

But as I crossed at the stoplight,

a girl, still growing up,

skated up to the corner

on her board from the perpendicular side.

She wore knee length socks,

her body heavily weighted in longish jean shorts.

Her black shirt was shapeless,

a faded baseball cap turned backward over thin reddish hair.

She turned her pasty and pocked face toward me,

then her eyes darted away.

She looked good to me

as she stepped onto her board and skated away.

Her face and her body are hers,

not a mannequin for me to criticize.