Big Naked Man
by Alison Luterman
This poem was written after the poet saw this sculpture Big Man by Ron Mueck in the Hirshhorn museum in Washington, DC.
Slumps, glowering,
ten feet tall
in a corner of the white museum.
The little live boy is amazed
at the man’s gigantic penis,
slack, pink, hairy.
He giggles with his hand over his mouth,
pointing at the sad sack balls
ten times their normal size,
hanging like discouraged tomatoes
in the wrinkled pink scrotum.
Here, little boy, is what you get if you’re lucky,
if you live to get old:
pendulous belly, thighs like spoiled milk,
veins, splotches, wrinkles, enlarged pores.
The big naked man
has spent all his non-life in various galleries,
amazing and disgusting onlookers.
Is he really polyester?
How long did it take to make him?
They never ask, Who loved him?
Although clearly someone did:
enough to render
in perfect precision every detail of his downfall,
and then leave him
naked, and vulnerable,
just like the rest of us in the end.
(Note: the last photo is sculptor Ron Mueck working on another sculpture.)
4 comments:
I like the sculptor way more than I like the statues. Big Dude
I definitely approve of the young boy looking at that sculpture! I would have loved to have been able to take my time looking at something like that when I was a little boy. Why, shucks, I would still love to see works like this on public display!
Interesting.
The other day I discovered photographer Matthias Vriens-McGrath he does a lot of fashion work and nudes
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