Sarah Azizi — “Camouflage”

April 8, 2008

Sarah Azizi — “Camouflage”

Camouflage

He thought my skirt was too short,
and the rising curves of my breasts too tantalizing.
Can’t you wear a turtleneck?

It was our third date.
No, I said, besides, they don’t
disappear. Since I wanted to get laid—

yes, I am that kind of girl—
I grabbed a cardigan.
In the restaurant sat a girl as white

as him, her shirt tighter and lower than mine,
her mosquito breasts exposed,
side cleavage below her armpits,

pink nipples hard under linen. Everyone
smiled at her. At me, they stared.
I’m a busty girl, I grinned at him.

There are ways to camouflage, he said.
I love your body, but not
the attention it draws. Into dawn he dragged

his gleaming teeth and lips
over my flesh, sucked
on my pale brown nipples,

ran his hands up my thighs.
He pulled my lips apart.
His cock hung, dangled

dangerously, and grew,
slid into me. I convulsed,
opened wider and wider;

gushed, poured over it.
I woke with the sheet around my waist,
pulled it over my breasts. They’d dangled

all night, precariously, embarrassingly.
His white body lay naked beside me.

I pushed the sheet off me and wrapped
it around him. Can’t you cover yourself?

This is not a poem of self-degradation. Listen:
My body is not to be camouflaged.
This is a poem of telling:
My body is not obscene.

—Sarah Azizi

forthcoming in 34thParallel

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