Last night Vicki and three generation of Gunvalson women journeyed to Italy to experience the beauty of Rome. There is only one way we can express the aesthetic impact of their journey: poetry.

Vicki Gunvalson Wants to Be the Venus de Milo

The vista is ringed with the metal rim
of the peephole as you pull your head away from the great door,
giant knocker, giant knockers
converging perspectives on the secret worlds that are hidden
in gated communities.

Stumble through the turnstyle, no style muu-muu instead
of togas. The Colosseum was always haunted by ghosts
of the future, by women who do not understand.
The thumb their nose at the thumbs down for
the vanquished warrior soaking the clay

With his blood, his armored arm like a giant cuff
clutching a shield as a spear lays to his side. Just last night,
he was at the dinner table throwing punch
after jeweled punch and his cohorts. The battle didn't end bloody
but with egos bruised.

Now, the forfeiter peers over the rail
into the pit, and she doesn't understand—confusing the bloodstains
for a California Merlot. She would sack the ruins for their art
and confuse them for garden sculptures,
too expensive for the exchange rate.

And she will paint the mercury silvered marble tan
in a hut in her back yard. She will place a sock over David's penis
to hide it from her shame. That statue of Hera
once proud atop a hill, will be painted as well,
and she will cover its huge breasts on the skinny frame

Like two balloons taped to a window shutter,
bulbous on slats, slattern, slanted, sloping like her daughter's nose.
Sand out those imperfections with the doctor's scalpel chisel,
uses his hands to tighten your face into a mask
with a cocked eye, like a helmet

Pointed top, holes for the eye, a metal strip to protect the nose
perfected by science. Wear it in the ring to battle.
The color of your victory is brittle pink, like your nails
and lips, with a bit of crimson dripping down,
the gargled wine sanguine stain of your demise.

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