CREATURE

by Leopoldine Core

Lindsay Lohan
did Marilyn Monroe
for Playboy
and I think the word classic was used.

I said no.
I said creature.

Hugh Hefner didn’t like her beauty

which I think of
as bratty and ripe.

I read something about her
penisy labia
in a magazine

and I pictured it.

I saw
a thin white
sausage
in my room.

Her udders
and the big
cat’s smile
between her
legs.

Marilyn
is maybe

a DEATH MASK.

I say maybe
it’s just how I talk

though all the time
I’m certain of things.

I see the creature
crawling toward me

I see the love
in my own mouth

like milk.

I can’t stop looking at her.
I think this is what it is

to be a bisexual
and an addict.

You just get the shit kicked out of you.

You get to bask
in the old milk
of Marilyn Monroe.

White sun washes white
over the room.

A car passes.

Is it white light or black light that fills the set of our eyes when we die?

I think it is instead red
but really its brown.

It is the color of all our pumping guts in darkness.
Every color breathing in the room of your head.

So much makes me think of death
some baroque picnic

garlands of meat
Lindsay’s feet

her toes those
fat white grapes
pouring off
my computer.

Still
these aren’t seductive pictures.
I mean I’m obsessed with them

but they aren’t seductive.

She doesn’t have a secret
or anything.

She has a working class glimmer
which is actually
the opposite
of glimmer.

It is an object that no longer shines.

Sooty window of
a factory
and the beautiful
door

is open.

What happens when you work your whole life?

You are lamby
blue collar

grit.

You just become
a candle.

That’s it.

Leopoldine Core is the author of the chapbook Young Friend and the poetry collection Veronica Bench. She is the recipient of a 2015 Whiting award for fiction, as well as fellowships from The Center for Fiction and The Fine Arts Work Center. Her collection of stories When Watched will be out next year from Penguin. She lives in New York City.