you make all the girls swoon, and then lament how harpies pound on your door

I don't know 

if I wore glasses 

when I met you 

 

but I know 

the last time 

I saw you you 

 

drank a drink 

I bought you 

with another 

 

woman who 

was far uglier 

than I have 

 

ever been. I have brown eyes, did I ever tell you? 

Your eyes are too too blue, tell-all awful, and too 

too pretty; you make all the girls swoon, and then 

lament how harpies pound on your door, plucking 

the very shingles off your roof, conducting through 

their unanimous will a plot to kill your hive's queen, 

fix a hose from the car's tailpipe to pump barnyard 

dread straight into your ken, therefore you demand 

I ought never wish to lie in your bed. I have black eyes, 

 

did I tell you? But your eyes are damp blue, fingers in 

winter blue, worrying about a prom date blue, never 

washed a dish blue. Have I mentioned my eyes are 

dead brown, dirt brown, stone brown, done with you 

brown, screaming out in the streets I'm so drunk brown, 

I'm just ignoring the noise rising up from streets asleep 

brown? As in, as brown as dead leaves because my love's 

eyes were dead brown and when he shouted down at 

that drunk on the street that New Year's Eve from 

 

my third floor window that drunk man called him 

Whiskey Whore Boy. And his eyes were not wish-

wash blue, his eyes were mostly moss and trees, 

not mojitos in a barroom, no, his eyes all gin-lit in 

a hotel room on our last night were ice-cold, even 

in his farewell he was bold, his eyes anyone might 

have called plain, but they could at least cry. I am 

sick to death of your blue eyes, fabric eyes, flower 

eyes. I have brown eyes, plain and saying eyes behind 

 

thick frames, glassy eyes handing themselves over 

to you in buckets eyes, dig your hands into my black 

soil eyes, my ugly eyes reaching into your eyes for 

my twin eyes, look back at me eyes while your eyes 

crawl the walls, cloud-blue, wandering off as milky 

bosomed maids will look away from the eyes that 

seek the crevices deep between their heavy breasts 

that sway beneath the cows they bend to milk eyes. 

Won't you have another drink from my silty yonder 

 

eyes? I may look 

plain but I've got 

roses in my blood, 

 

can bloom right 

out the soil of these 

here brackish eyes, 

 

wander a limb across 

the chest of your 

country, unlock 

the footlocker of 

your desire with the tip 

of my vine eyes. 

 

[Cate Marvin {1969- } 'An Etiquette for Eyes', from The Best American Poetry, 2014]