SHELLEY ETTINGER

OUR AMPLE BOSOM

We are speaking of brassieres

and how mass marketing was just begun

a hundred years ago. Advertising run amok. Savvy sales pitches convince us

despite reason, gravity, natural history,

that the savory glands must point, stand up. Thus nasty capitalists rack riches

paying pennies to teenaged girls in maquiladoras

to sew torture devices that we actually believe we need. Sons of bitches,

say I. Sons of bankers, Teresa amends.
 

I am looking at my own true love

naked in the bathroom before bed

and I tell her she resembles the Venus of Willendorf. She snorts,

of course. No, it's true, I say. In centuries past

you'd have been adored. Expanse of flesh girdles midriff. Soft succulent breasts.

Later, after sex, Teresa caresses my chest,

whispers, you too. Like a Rubens nude. I smirk: maybe when I was young

and these were round and firm. She clucks: so even you

accept the undergarment manufacturers'

misogynistic propaganda. She chuckles at the tongue twister, then purses her lips

to my erect left nipple. Conversation ends.
 

Shelley Ettinger's work has been published or is forthcoming in Blue Fifth Review, Blithe House Quarterly, Lodestar Quarterly, Pindeldyboz, Glass Tesseract, Tattoo Highway, Samsara Quarterly, Mudlark and other journals. She was a Summer 2001 resident at Norcroft Writing Retreat for Women and has a Summer 2003 residency at the Anderson Center for Interdisciplinary Studies. She is completing her first novel, for which she was awarded a research grant by the Money for Women/Barbara Deming Memorial Fund.