The Page Three Madonna

It was like any other calendar,
Free from Jenson’s Auto Parts,
Arriving in a cardboard sleeve,
Sporting a dozen bronzed,
Airbrushed, beauties, curves
Immaculate if a little unlikely,
Their smiles, on the beach or
The Ferrari, a dazzling
Mix of desperation and disdain.

On the wall behind boss’s desk
It became, like everything else,
Prematurely aged with grease,
Smoke, and the sort of neglect
Only the all-male cast can provide.
Vin, twenty stone, queer as get out,
Capable with clutches, tolerated;
Stan, the balding, petulant boss;
Apprentice Ricky, pale and wary.

The year trundled by with the
Usual traffic of bent metal,
Lubricants, profanities and fumes.
Come December, with business
Slow, Stan is in the office on
His annual tidy-up and I’m there
Too, on the phone for a paint order.
He flips the page on the calendar,
And we see her for the first time.

Behind her a fluorescence of gold
And silvers, vermilions and marines,
Like a sunset and sunrise all in one,
Her hair a lustrous cascade, her soft
Eyes pools into which we fall, first
Stan and then I, on our knees to receive
The abundance flowing in supple
Streams from her breasts, her smile
Exacting of a different love.