Glenn McKee

A BEAUTY SPOT

“…the strange experience of beauty.”
–Marianne Moore

I discovered a beauty spot on
my mind soon after we met.
Self-diagnosed weeks later as
benign love in situ, I’ve watched
this spot grow, its size increasing
dramatically each time it’s in your
presence as if nurtured by your beauty
and watered with your warm words.

I’ve done nothing to encourage this
growth now larger than my ability
to ignore. In non-medical terms this
translates into being unable to take my
eyes off you in your company and treating
myself when I’m alone with memories
made stronger by photographs of you.

I’ve taken an amazing amount of over- and
under-the-counter medication which
has only fixed my attention on what has grown
into your likeness everywhere in my life.

—from Rattle #17, Summer 2002

__________

Glenn McKee: “I suffer from a 60-year-old habit of tearing poetry off my life. Not many pages of my life remain, and those that do hang on like surgical tape plastered on a hairy body. Nevertheless, I intend to write myself out of life.”