I’ve always despised Martha Stewart,
her smug, “I can cook anything from scratch,
decorate a table with weeds from my
yard,”and, her hints:
add a Lazy Susan to your fridge,
label everything,
make a triple fudge multilayered cake
while dictating an article on preventing mildew,
create a blender smoothie from
home grown vegetables,
and, most importantly,
how to be the perfect prison inmate by teaching yoga.
My first swimsuit was a
two piece blue stripped beauty
with a skirt bottom.
I loved it, the only problem was that after a hard afternoon
of playing in the shallow river waters,
my top would
drift upwards to reveal tiny nipples, my mother would say,
“just take off your top” but that was bad advice for a
self conscious little girl.
at 16 I wore a one piece tank suit with four buttons on
the front outlining my breasts,
my mother thought I looked wow,
I felt that my thighs were fat.
At 26, I had a grown-up two piece with a skirt bottom.
After a dip in the ocean a much older male relative said,
“You are a fine figure of a woman” which made me
feel slightly dirty, never did wear that outfit again.
Now when I go swimming, I hide accordion skin,
vein lined legs, and falling body parts
by wearing a long sleeve caftan
that drapes towards my ankles.
Martha Stewart, who, at 81, throws her perfectly coiffed hair
around like she is making a Clairol commercial, dons white (white!)
bathing attire that shows
the full top half her breasts.
My grandmother and her friends would go swimming
unashamed of the blue streaks threatening to
escape from their legs, belly fat and breasts hanging low
as ripe peaches on a tree.
They never heard of Martha Stewart.
Karen Olshansky lives in Marin County California with her husband and a well fed Koi named Pickle Face. She writes poetry in order to maintain her sanity. Her work has appeared in The Literary Nest, Tuck Magazine and the anthologies Lingering in the Margins, Life in Ten Minutes, Unspoken, and The James River Anthology.