Pride in Having Small Feet

Overstrung
ailing
puny
inefficient
unhappy
slimsy girls
bustled & padded

With such carriages as these
equipoise is nearly impossible

•

Mental beauties
open yourselves
     o   pen

Being “all used up”
every day for weeks is wrong

& doubles
the myriad feminine dangers
of nervous force

•

I, too,
without a word of excuse
formerly lived as an unmitigated ninny

Linger upon the chaise
of this simple lesson:

Might you unlearn
to resent the joy
the world takes in you,

learn
to return its gaze



From For Girls (& Others), Bloof 2008