Price Well Above All Rubies Poem by gershon hepner

Price Well Above All Rubies



Women on the edge of being just
a little overweight are more enticing
than those with narrow hips and flattened bust
who on the runways are more like the sugared icing
on wedding cakes than dough of Shabbos loaves
baked into challahs eaten after kiddush wine;
enveloped in their fat are treasure troves
which are of course for every man the bottom line
that he is seeking when he’s making love.
I know a woman just like this, discovered long
ago by me. Her price is well above
all rubies, as I tell her in a weekly song
I sing to her, before she shares my glass
of wine and puts the challahs on the Shabbos table.
I love her for her face and breasts and arse,
but also for the way that she is always able
to take from me all that I give, returning
what I have given with compounded interest. That,
more than her beauty, means that I am earning
from her far more than I would from a runway brat.

Mickey, in Philip Roth in Philip Roth’s “Sabbath Theater, ” describes Drenka, a dark, Italian-looking Croat from the Dalmatian coast, as “a full, firmly made woman at the provocative edge of being just overweight, her shape, at her heaviest, reminiscent of those clay figurines molded circa 2000 B.C, fat little dolls with big breasts and big thighs unearthed all the way from Europe down to Asia Minor and worshipped under a dozen different names as the great mother of the gods”.

11/10/09

COMMENTS OF THE POEM
Jack Williams 10 November 2009

It's really interesting the way your clauses overlap your lines. Most poets (myself included) use line-breaks as punctuation, but the way you do it gives your poems an unusual flow. It's also pretty cool the way you reference your inspirations.

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