Marilyn Peck: ‘Agastopia’, ‘A Gift from a Friend’ and ‘Paronomasia’

Agastopia

When the love and admiration of legs
was fashionable, women played hard.
They enhanced their legs back then
in war time, and there were many ways
available to display legs’ shapeliness.
Silk made the best stockings. Woollen,
cotton lisle, until nylons: then riots
broke out when forty thousand women
queued for thirteen thousand pairs
leading to a declaration of more
world wars. Bare legs were unbearable
but hairs were encouraged to grow for
warmth in winter. Morally debatable
trousers made for women and girls?
Reasons why they may be worn: as
Long as they did not adorn, like pearls
Or gold, the bible says! But not for
An answer that the real question begs.
Agastopia is a fetishistic blessing
On specific body parts: why not legs?

Marilyn Peck

A Gift from a Friend

Still-life planned:
White watercolour paper.
Controlled brushstrokes, painting roses.
Blues, purples, crimson. Yellow flows.
Mixes into unexpected shapes.
Drapes, wraps around edges, drying.
Paper tilted, taped tight on a board.
Drips, runs, slow, lies in pools,
Spreading feathered strokes, brush
Drying edges where roses are showing.
Stems prickle with thorns.
Easy shapes. Paint with a twist and turn.

Tip of a brush dipped into dark.
Pick up water with a swift board tilt.
Brush-tip sharpens prickle shapes.
Real roses spread out where they lie
superb, still. Captured with brushstrokes
they continue opening, their real petals dying.
Red roses on paper are multiplying. Drying.

Marilyn Peck

Paronomasia

He stood on the predella thinking prelapsarian thoughts.
Always applying a procacity to use his his procerity to
his advantage, he craned his neck further aloft, and stood
as tall as he could reach, prinked and preened, and was
affected in his manner. It was thought by many to be the
epitome of proctalgia that he should be so premeditated
in his stance. He prangled his nostrils with a pinch so hard,
that the whole church proscenium was pyrophoric as he applied
his podiacide.
ambiguous words
all he said was fallacy
he was past his prime

Marilyn Peck