Poetry Friday: Ikea’s Not the Only Scary Thing

In the department store

The women who work at cosmetics

counters terrify me. They seem molded

of superior plastic or light metal.

They could be shot up into orbit

never mussing a hair, make-up intact.

When I walk through, they never pester

me, never attack me with loud perfume,

never wheedle me into a make-over.

Perhaps I scare them too, leaking

some subversive pheromone.

I trot through like a raccoon

in an airport. They see me,

they look and turn away. Perhaps

I am a project they fear to tackle

too wild, too wooly, trailing

electrical impulses from my loose

black hair. They fasten on the throat

of the neat fortyish blond behind me

like stoats, dragging her to their

padded stools. A lost cause,

I sidle past into men’s sporting

gear, safe but bemused, wondering

if they judge me too far gone

to salvage or smell my stubborn

unwillingness like rank musk.

–by Marge Piercy from Colors Passing Through Us (Alfred A. Knopf).

I love the idea of shop clerks as stoats. That’s a keeper.

I read this and just hooted. This put me in mind of both Barry… and Neil…with regard to Ikea… Maybe some people are born to accumulate? And it’s all the prettyshinyplastic preciousssss, and thus we wants it? I don’t know. I love the things they have, but I really have to carefully plan arriving ten minutes after the doors open, go directly to said items of stuff, and run. And egads, I don’t want to go near a makeup counter. Although, it’s true — they don’t chase me. Not since Poison came out in junior high… 1985! I must really look like a lost cause…

I love Marge Piercy; at least she can laugh about being thought of as ‘far gone.’