Burlesques

Burlesque Portraits

by Raoul Gradvohl

The cot falls open

like a cage.

The escaped toy lion

bares its fangs.

Dressed in just

a Freudian slip,

for the mens room's gaze,

the girl plays cute.

 Glamour girl
escapes the frame,
voyeur's nightmare
or adolescent's dream?






   



Each night she dances

jovial hoodlums dream

they've laid her like a swan.

Contortionist to shrink:
"I'm forced into impossible positions."

Shrink to contortionist:
"heal thyself, physician."



'Shades of Scarlet’

a star-struck harlot

haunts a fading prom queen’s dreams.






in the supplicant’s gesture

in the hollywood myth

genocide

lies





He fixes his contacts

In the dark room,

afterwards touches them up.

She fixes her face in his bathroom,

her beauty was never enough.

her image becomes

his ‘idee fixe’,

his depiction

her fixation.



 Caught in the spotlight,
but never in the act:
such is the femme fatale's lot;
always an accessory after the fact,
X marks the stab wounds spot.





Voluptuous, this would-be goddess:
more Artemis than Aphrodite,
 
Smiling brightly
She holds a pose
Of deliberate dramatic entrance.
 
Entranced by stars and adoration,
Destined only for oblivion:

More hunted than huntress -
victim than vixen;
The goddess of the chase -
 
unchaste.

Tonight, might the casting couch await you
like  Endymion?

 

Whenever dark desires grow

back then,

good time girls

always

        said ……..

 No!

I posted a version of these on the Sonnet Board 'Not Sonnet' area at the end of September 2002. Originally I'd put together a collection of words and images together with Raoul Gradvohl's photographs as a Powerpoint presentation which no longer exists. I converted the powerpoint into web pages as I developed my web-site later that year.

I was a little hesitant to post them, partly due to the content and partly a concern about copyright as the photographs had been downloaded from the University of California's Photography Museum site. The original collection and information about Raoul Gradvohl's life and work still exists and can be found here. I tried to seek permission from the Museum to use the images on my web-site, but they refused.

 Some debate ensued regarding how the women were represented. I commented,

 "I agree that these images are multi-layered - ambivilent. I irritated feminist friends when I wrote these; they felt I was dabbling with pornography (which may be the case!). However what is interesting is the way that what is deemed simply risque by one generation becomes vilified by the next. A good case in point here is the image of the woman in the cot. Right now the picture has all kind of unacceptable connotations of paedophilia...at the time of its making though was that the case? Just think of the use of the word 'babe' and 'baby' as a term of sexual endearment right through the 30's to 60's. Interesting stuff."

Later I made the point, "these images are oddly haunting, a heady mixture of innocence and exploitation, art and bathos...."  I would still hold to that position, however looking back I can see how the roots of my interest in these link to the way I represented Ariadne in 'Naxos', and the whole area of what I called 'low-life chic' in my sonnet 'Summertime'. This was a theme that I became increasingly drawn to over the next couple of years.