I sing the body imperfect:
Bless you, funny smile.
Bless you, protuberant, awkward tuber of a nose.
Bless you, toes (I like you the most).
Bless my too-long mid-face, keen eyes,
focused and soft with green gravity and easily collapsible:
Two cups to an eager pitcher.
Bless these piano hands, long thumbs, narrow reach.
Bless the surgical scar across my right-hand knuckle.
Bless the coltish buckle of my knees.
Bless you, spindly-speckled arms,
pin-hole dusted with dark gold
like a lightly toasted slice of white bread.
Bless my freckled breasts, small buttons of a little jacket.
Bless this hippy pelvis, vast and hairy and
altogether a woman's.
Bless the collarbones of my broad shoulders,
jutting out, my mom says,
like budding angel wings.
Bless these ribs like ladder rungs.
Bless the limitless wind of my lungs.
Bless the muscles that shift like restless actors
behind the milk-colored curtain of my back.
Bless you, divoted stomach, bless your holy hunger.
Bless the warm curve of the back of my neck,
kitten-cushioned by baby hairs.
Bless the goofy, insistent outward poke of my front teeth.
Bless this swollen pout of lip, round
chunky cheeks, stolen from
the museum giftshop of my girlhood.
Bless the offset of their softness by
too-high,
too-dark,
too-arched eyebrows and
my mother's cheekbones.
Bless my forehead, smooth rectangle.
Bless my two temples and bless
the worshiper between them,
laboring behind a veil of bone.
Bless this serious face and bless the continuous breaking of it,
like a wave on a California coastline,
into laughter.
