Leo's Girl

It's the new incarnation of Eden, better than a poker face—copied plenty

Brow tilts for our gossip—standing praised, worth criminal breach.

Older than her tundra and postcard attractive, how to introduce a public muse?

Mountains took the years at a happy strike, won over by the scent of women fallen about the sea and its day.

The smirk that is not one straight motion, hooked up,

A confession is hardly delicate in oil slicks.

lady sits to question as the painter is adjusting the ink crown,

hair is such a worry, patterned nest

roses wilted, just gaze, crumbs left

virgin, the fingers craved to perfection by the middle man’s lofty imagination.

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### Author’s Note ###

Leo’s Girl is another poem from my 2014 anthology, There’s Tofu in This. This collection explores identity, art, and the myths we create around beauty.

This poem plays with the idea of fame, admiration, and the way history immortalizes a face while the real person beneath it remains elusive. Inspired by the paradox of being both revered and owned by public imagination, it unravels the layers of a muse—someone whose image is copied, praised, and dissected, yet never fully known.

There’s something both alluring and unsettling about the way we assign meaning to a face. The Mona Lisa, the ultimate *Leo’s Girl*, has been repainted in a thousand forms—her mystery endlessly speculated upon, her smirk analyzed like a confession trapped in oil. The poem lingers in that space between admiration and distortion, between art and reality, where even the most perfect image is shaped by the hands (and desires) of others.

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