What Rough Beast | Poem for March 8, 2020

Cheryl Caesar
Mistress Goop and Her New Candle, “It Smells Like My Vagina”

For $75, tax and shipping, buyers can smell her vagina.
You have to be young, blond, thin and rich to respectably sell your vagina.

Sure, given a room and a landline, you can earn 25 cents a minute
Supplying a throaty voice and tales for it to tell, your vagina.

Or open it up to the camera’s eye, just for the cash that’s in it,
$100 a day for the varied pastel of your vagina.

But Paltrow thinks beyond sight and sound, and she knows how to spin it:
Cocktails of cervical fluid, a light Zinfandel from her vagina.

Only touch remains to exploit, and her trademark sex doll will win it,
As Gwyneth provides the formula Goop, the gel for its vagina.

Cheryl Caesar‘s poems have appeared in Writers ResistThe Mark Literary ReviewCream and CrimsonAgony OperaWinedrunk SidewalkThe Stay ProjectWhat Rough Beast, as well as in the anthology Nationalism: (Mis)Understanding Donald Trump’s Capitalism, Racism, Global Politics, International Trade and Media Wars, Africa VS North America Vol 2 (Mwanaka Media and Publishing, 2019), edited by Tendai Rinos Mwanaka; and other poetry in Total EclipsePrachyaThe Trinity ReviewThe Mojave River ReviewPanoplyDormivegliaAcademy of the Heart and MindThe Black Coffee ReviewThe Wild WordQ/A PoetryAriel ChartCredo EspoirBleached Butterfly and Beautiful Cadaver. Caesar holds a PhD in comparative literature from the Sorbonne. She teaches writing at Michigan State University.

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