Selma Makes A Hard Sell Poem by Frank Bana

Among the cancer centres and the property adventures
Nests a promotion for liqueur
The full-figured woman
Black-dressed and unblemished
Makes her frontal, direct sale
In half profile, a man looks on
Self-conscious and aware

Is it her breasts, roller-coastering
For which he stares enraptured
Or the bright red bottle, matched to her lips
(Set off by her dark fabric)
Perched on a table by her flank?
No, those impossible swells and pitches
Reduce the product to secondary rank

Their waves ensure the shipwreck
Of his curved features, vainly sunk
Into her brave geometry
By shoulder straps and jewels, aligned and hung
As perfectly as vessels calmed at sea
The centrepiece of her display, the peel
Of fruit concocted in with cochineal

The red gloss of her fingernails,
They brush the table, they caress
The edge of gems, unmounted, strewn perhaps
In homage to allusiveness
The page is turned, the drink is downed, but she
Remains posed in her rapture where
He thirsts for her captivity.