Common House Magazine

You Watch the Wrong Beauty

Will Nixon

With crime in your teeth & saints in your veins, you watch the wrong beauty drink the dirty liquors of Bombay & teach dawn to beggars who pray. She injects needles with the Queen of Siam & gives faith the final exam, this beauty you watch with your blood tied in knots. She swallows the eye off a dollar & corners the peepholes of desire. She sips the religion out of a martini & strips to skin made of lead. The address she gave is nothing like God’s.

So light the match to your pride & worship both sides, the beauty who beats the devil at charades & the beauty who leads the animal liberation parade with her teeth sharpened to fangs. She will not be denied, this beauty who crushes cathedrals to make wedding day rings & marches down the aisle between angels and fire. The number she gave has zeroes to the horizon, so call when you’re feeling immortal. She’ll whisper your name like a hurricane.

Will Nixon's poetry collections include My Late Mother as a Ruffed Grouse and Love in the City of Grudges. He's also the author of The Pocket Guide to Woodstock and the co-author of Walking Woodstock: Journeys into the Wild Heart of America's Most Famous Small Town. He lives in Kingston, New York.