Manet's Olympia From The Perspective of Margaret Atwood

Manet's Olympia

She reclines, more or less.

Try that posture, it's hardly languor.

Her right arm sharp angles.

With her left she conceals her ambush.

Shoes but no stockings,

How sinister. The flower

behind her ear is naturally

not real, of a piece

with the sofa's drapery.

The windows, (if any) are shut.This is indoor sin.

Above the head of the (clothed) maid

is an invisible voice balloon: Slut.

But. Consider the body,

unfragile, defiant, the pale nipples

staring you right in the bull's-eye.

Consider also the black ribbon

around the neck. What's under it?

A fine, red threadline, where the head
was taken off and glued back on.

The body's an offer,

but the neck's as far as it goes.

This is no morsel.

Put clothes on her and you'd have a schoolteacher,

the kind with the brittle whiphand.

There's someone else in this room.

You, Monsieur Voyeur.

As for that object of yours

she's seen those before, and better.

I, the head,am the only subject

of this picture.

You, Sir, are furniture.

Get stuffed.

Margaret Atwood

From the collection Morning In The Burned House, 1995