Jeanne-Marie Osterman
This Smells Like My Vagina
After Gwyneth Paltrow’s candles
There’s a picture of Gwyneth Paltrow
in Town & Country magazine,
head up a seven-foot high vagina
made of tissue paper flowers—
the outer labia, pale coral;
the inner, vibrant rose.
Will it swallow her up?
The crush of pink
takes me back to Hollywood
where I once worked with Victoria Principal,
taking her to lunches and shoots,
writing what she’d say to the camera
about a shampoo that smelled like honey and flowers,
which, at that time, was an exotic enough scent for most people.
When we’d enter a room,
everyone would stop to look
at her soft skin,
glossy auburn hair,
perfectly painted lips.
They’d start talking louder and laugh,
sometimes drop f-bomb,
hoping she’d notice them.
Those years? I admit—
all I wanted was to see my commercials on TV,
keep the lacquer on my nails,
the occasional warm body—
living for what eventually dried up,
went up in smoke.
—Submitted on 09/23/2020
Jeanne-Marie Osterman is the author of There’s a Hum (Finishing Line Press, 2018) and Shellback (Paloma Press, 2021). Her poems have appeared in Borderlands, Cathexis Northwest, California Quarterly, The Madison Review, Bluestem, and other journals, as well as in the anthologies Our Poetica: A Testament to the Shared Uniqueness of the Poetic Experience (Cathexis Northwest Press, 2019), and Of Burgers and Barrooms: Stories and Poems (Main Street Rag, 2017). Osterman lives in New York City, and serves as poetry editor for Cagibi.
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