Bettie Page and the Wisdom of Old Age
by Anne Champion
The world’s worst sin is shame,
and the punishment for it is women.
God didn’t tell Eve to hate her body—
He gave her air baths in Eden, a figure
that undulates like a river. I know
girls are trying to recreate me;
I’ve seen them in the magazines, backlit
by men’s craving. I know the ways
they thinned to bone, like all good girls
must. The punishment for shame
is us: we torment men
as our hour glass curves expire.
They need us so they want to see us
bound and gagged. They love us
so much they have to kill us. I know
the click of a camera is the same
language of the fist, the rhythm
as it strips and hones, the skin’s petals
unfurl obediently beneath its heat.
Young Betties, turn your wrists
to the lens, reveal the map
of your blue veins, stun
with your arterial thumping, defy
the shame that wants you tamed.
Now that I’m near death, I can
tell you how the six men pinned
me to the concrete, and I knew
enough to say harder. I can
tell you that my daddy’s name is a sore
in my mouth that I can’t stop
biting. Once, there was a boy
who loved to see me gagged
so much that he died from it.
On my wedding night, my husband
wrapped his hands around my neck
and said he’d finish me for good,
but God intervened. And then God
and the Devil never let me rest,
fighting over the damned in my earshot—
even a mythical man is still a man.
Don’t listen to the lessons for the good
girls: have no shame, ignore
the silly salad forks, the spotless silver,
the curtsies, the crossed ankles.
Learn the body’s openings, how
to make steam rise from your eyes,
that even the foot’s high arch
is a flirt, and that love is impossible
with the heart of a girl next door—
it’s false, like a child’s tooth,
its root will weaken and it falls away.
My body vanished and will soon
vanish again. The good girl is always a ghost,
the body is always a wound.
and the punishment for it is women.
God didn’t tell Eve to hate her body—
He gave her air baths in Eden, a figure
that undulates like a river. I know
girls are trying to recreate me;
I’ve seen them in the magazines, backlit
by men’s craving. I know the ways
they thinned to bone, like all good girls
must. The punishment for shame
is us: we torment men
as our hour glass curves expire.
They need us so they want to see us
bound and gagged. They love us
so much they have to kill us. I know
the click of a camera is the same
language of the fist, the rhythm
as it strips and hones, the skin’s petals
unfurl obediently beneath its heat.
Young Betties, turn your wrists
to the lens, reveal the map
of your blue veins, stun
with your arterial thumping, defy
the shame that wants you tamed.
Now that I’m near death, I can
tell you how the six men pinned
me to the concrete, and I knew
enough to say harder. I can
tell you that my daddy’s name is a sore
in my mouth that I can’t stop
biting. Once, there was a boy
who loved to see me gagged
so much that he died from it.
On my wedding night, my husband
wrapped his hands around my neck
and said he’d finish me for good,
but God intervened. And then God
and the Devil never let me rest,
fighting over the damned in my earshot—
even a mythical man is still a man.
Don’t listen to the lessons for the good
girls: have no shame, ignore
the silly salad forks, the spotless silver,
the curtsies, the crossed ankles.
Learn the body’s openings, how
to make steam rise from your eyes,
that even the foot’s high arch
is a flirt, and that love is impossible
with the heart of a girl next door—
it’s false, like a child’s tooth,
its root will weaken and it falls away.
My body vanished and will soon
vanish again. The good girl is always a ghost,
the body is always a wound.
Anne Champion is the author of Reluctant Mistress (Gold Wake Press, 2013) and The Dark Length Home (Noctuary Press, 2017). Her poems have appeared in Verse Daily, Prairie Schooner, descant, The Pinch, Pank Magazine, Thrush Poetry Journal, Redivider, New South, and elsewhere. She was a 2009 Academy of American Poet’s Prize recipient, a Barbara Deming Memorial grant recipient, a 2015 Best of the Net winner, and a Pushcart Prize nominee. She holds degrees in Behavioral Psychology and Creative Writing from Western Michigan University and an MFA in Poetry from Emerson College. She currently teaches writing and literature at Wheelock College in Boston, MA.