JOHN HORVÁTH JR.
ERIN'S BUST

Folding clothes and wiping plates,
she works at silent attitudes
not quite new, not quite old,
nor not quite suited to the place
her parents set for her.

(Spreading puffy soft
hurting sensitive soreness)

She who occupied with silent spaces
between well-constructed sentences
and book pages perfectly organized
with secretarial precision--
dolls lined against her walls.

(Self-consciously showing,
then the acceptable purchase
as passage token pedestal rising)

Somehow proper that her own maturity
silently bubbled into breasts, ballooned
from awkward puffiness into prettiness
at which boys smile and men pretend
at not seeing. Another passive place

to occupy (with practiced patience
while growing limbs and flesh
on the pedestal).