Vscorpiozine's Blog

Poem by John Grey – Ugly May 26, 2019

UGLY

Ugly.
That’s what the other girls called you
all the way through grammar school.
Not ugly as sin.
They were still too young
to make that connection.
But ugly as yourself,
the face in the mirror that
your mother assured you was just lovely.
You weren’t convinced.
She only said it sometimes
and, even then, you were learning
that mothers always come out with that stuff
when they’re talking to their children.
Maybe she saw some kind of beauty.
Maybe she just wished it was there.
But the other kids were adamant.
You looked like the back end of a mule.

Some growing does come with
its own beauty treatment of course.
You journeyed from that mule’s rear
to its head to a more dignified horse’s noggin
and, finally, by the age of thirteen,
were a girl, average in appearance,
among other, mostly average, young girls.
Some even hung with you.
They forgot all of those ancient slurs.
You did too.
By then, your mother never commented
on your looks themselves,
just what you were doing with them:
the dresses worn too high above the knee,
the raids on the grownup makeup case.

By then, guys came into the frame.
The one you liked called you
and your friends ugly.
At sixteen, he couldn’t be with you enough.
By then, ugly had become more
indicative of the one who said it
than the ones they were saying it to.
You took ugly as a signpost
to a time when you wouldn’t be.

BIO:

John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident. Recently published in Midwest Quarterly, Poetry East and North Dakota Quarterly with work upcoming in South Florida Poetry Journal, Hawaii Review and the Dunes Review.