Fragrance & Beauty

Promises the man perfume
Commercial, oddly enough
On the sweatiest sports site.

Well, alright. One imagines
Sharon Olds could imagine
Linking all those in a poem,

Man beauty perfume with sweat.
Other poets could address
Capitalism in this,

Still others the craft of flesh
Through gaze, by scent, male athletes—
Problematize those bodies.

We’re just words weirded by words.
Fragrance and beauty. Each one
A little packet of breath,

A small bundle of letters
Tied together by ribbons
Of historical meanings,

Names, like all names, evoking
Things we aren’t, things once wordless,
Extracted and abstracted.