This arrived in my mailbox this morning from Knopf Poetry (knopfpoetry@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx). Robert Paul Reed College Today's poem is by Marge Piercy from her collection COLORS PASSING THROUGH US. *************************************************** One reason I like opera In movies, you can tell the heroine because she is blonder and thinner than her sidekick. The villainess is darkest. If a woman is fat, she is a joke and will probably die. In movies, the blondest are the best and in bleaching lies not only purity but victory. If two people are both extra pretty, they will end up in the final clinch. Only the flawless in face and body win. That is why I treat movies as less interesting than comic books. The camera is stupid. It sucks surfaces. Let's go to the opera instead. The heroine is fifty and weighs as much as a '65 Chevy with fins. She could crack your jaw in her fist. She can hit high C lying down. The tenor the women scream for wolfs down an eight course meal daily. He resembles a bull on hind legs. His thighs are the size of beer kegs. His chest is a redwood with hair. Their voices twine, golden serpents. Their voices rise like the best fireworks and hang and hang then drift slowly down descending in brilliant and still fiery sparks. The hippopotamus baritone (the villain) has a voice that could give you an orgasm right in your seat. His voice smokes with passion. He is hot as lava. He erupts nightly. The contralto is, however, svelte. She is supposed to be the soprano's mother, but is ten years younger, beautiful and Black. Nobody cares. She sings you into her womb where you rock. What you see is work like digging a ditch, hard physical labor. What you hear is magic as tricky as knife throwing. What you see is strength like any great athlete's. What you hear is still rendered precisely as the best Swiss watchmaker. The body is resonance. The body is the cello case. The body just is. The voice loud as hunger remagnetizes your bones. ------------------------------------------------------------------ To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off, digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html