The Sculptor, Dead at Age 34, and Her College Admirer by Michael Cantor

The Sculptor, Dead at Age 34, and Her College Admirer

Beautiful and dark
with a vague foreign accent,
she never looked at me.

I joined a literary group to meet her
and passed around my bullfight poem
which was all lower case,
with the perfect last line
about mister death.

She said it was derivative,
and for three or four days
I thought that was a compliment.

Her rope sculptures hang
in the Whitney and the Tate.
An obituary said
she loathed being called
beautiful.

by Michael Cantor

Editor’s Note: The narrator gets the last laugh in the last line… or does he instead suffer from ego? Regardless, the careful enjambment and repetition of ‘beautiful’ serve this poem well.