.

The Jeweler’s Deposition
at the Coroner’s Inquest

I certainly will tell you what I can.
I knew the family—watched her growing up.
Take it for what it’s worth: I was her friend.

She started with the ears, at age fourteen:
My staple pierced each lobe, and put in place
Two tiny studs, and when the wounds had healed
She could wear earrings. Nothing strange in that.
It is time-hallowed and approved world-wide
For either sex, though different cultures choose
Quite a surprising range of ornaments.
Small hoops are standard, but you also find
Bells in the Far East, trinkets in the West,
In Africa smooth cylinders of stone.
Remarkable the kinds… but I digress.
You gentlemen just want to hear the facts.

When she was sixteen, punkish models wore
A ringlet at the navel’s edge, and she
Wanted the same, and so I nipped her skin
And set one just above mons Veneris.
This was a bit outré. Her relatives
Were horrified to see her by the pool
Triangulated (as it were) in gold,
With ears and navel functioning just like
The corners of a flesh-and-metal delta.
Some yuppie cousins joked among themselves;
Blue-collar uncles simply shook their heads.

After six months she came to me again,
Asked for a silver dot to grace her nose
And I obliged her, adding as lagniappe
Two more hooplets to each ear, arranged
Symmetrically, so that she seemed to be
A shower-rod sans curtains. As before,
There were recriminations in the family.
Ensconced at college, she no longer dealt
With disapproving parents or prim aunts,
And so she had a stud put through her lip
Diagonally from the nostril’s dot.
(Yes, it was my work. I don’t deny it.
That stud—in hindsight—was a fatal step.
I should have shown more judgment and restraint.)
At this point there was buzzing. Even friends
Thought she had gone too far. Though very pretty
She had few dates, except among a crowd
Of low musicians, motorcycle toughs,
And men of sadomasochistic bent.

She stopped by once more, just about the time
That she left college. Though she cried, and pled
The old ties of familiarity,
I would not—could not—honor her requests.
She wanted me to pinch her eyebrow where
The flesh is tight (a dangerous procedure)
And hang it with a platinum ring. What’s worse,
She asked to have a nail of silver placed
Straight through her tongue. Yes, gentlemen—you heard.
No jeweler could in conscience do this thing.
Even apart from the unseemliness
Of a nail transfixing that sweet organ
Of speech and laughter, eloquence and taste,
The tongue—as you well know—is moist and soft.
A wound that pierced it through would never heal.
Moreover, she obscenely hinted that
Intimate portions of her person might
Be candidates for other ornaments.
I refused her flat-out, and declared
Although I was broadminded I would not
Cooperate in what had clearly grown
Into a sick obsession. Then I begged
That she look in the mirror—really look—
And view the ghastly mask that was her face.
She left the shop insulted, but I felt
My words had hit home, for long after that
She was not seen in public. I had hopes
A sense of just proportion would prevail.
Then the bombshell news that staggered us…

What you see in these morgue shots, gentlemen,
Is not my work. No, I could never put
Cold metal in such tender, private places.
She must have patronized a sleazy shop
Down in the Village, or way up in Harlem,
Or by the boardwalk out in Coney Island:
A mart for rhinestones, tradebeads, and cheap brass
With body-piercing on the side—some dump
One step up from a tattoo parlor’s filth.
That’s where she got these vile adornments… Well,
Forgive me—I will try to stay composed.
This inquest is to ascertain the facts.

I am a jeweler, and I know my trade—
The body was not built for all this dross.
Jewelry is made for flesh, to add a gleam
Of the eternal to our passing clay.
For her, however, flesh was made for jewelry.
Metal seemed to fasten on her skin
Like disembodied fangs. I don’t know why.
But be assured I’ve told you everything
About my part in this appalling case.
I only did the piercings which I mentioned.
The others are the work of clumsy dolts
No better than mere butchers in technique
And with no sense of decency or honor.
The same, of course, goes for the bayonet
Of blued steel that was pushed right through her heart
By the unapprehended murderer.
What a time we live in, gentlemen!
That nightmares such as this can come to life
Is an indictment of our sordid age.
Look at these photos! Then again, perhaps
The world we get is what we most deserve.

At any rate, if you have further questions,
I’ll answer all of them, as best I can.

From Formal Complaints (Somers Rocks Press, 1997)

.

Poet’s Note:

This dramatic monologue has as its “silent interlocutors” the members of the coroner’s inquest board, who are investigating the murder of a young woman. The speaker is a jeweler who
knew the victim personally, and who provided her with several body piercings over the years. The members of the board say nothing, but simply listen as the jeweler gives his deposition concerning the woman, and her fanaticism about adorning her flesh with metal rings, studs, and pins.

The poem is in a deeply ironic mode, since the speaker cannot seem to draw the obvious linkage between his complicity in supporting the physical degradation known as body piercing, and the brutal stabbing of the woman by an “unapprehended murderer.” His words at the inquest seek to present himself as a sane, sensible, and rational citizen (the typical bien pensant liberal), when in fact his unconscious complicity in trendy stupidity is part and parcel of the entire atrocity. The world today is filled with such deluded people, who pride themselves on being open-minded and progressive and tolerant, but who step back in horror and deny any responsibility when the consequences of their liberalism become grossly apparent.

.

.

Joseph S. Salemi has published five books of poetry, and his poems, translations and scholarly articles have appeared in over one hundred publications world-wide.  He is the editor of the literary magazine TRINACRIA and writes for Expansive Poetry On-line. He teaches in the Department of Humanities at New York University and in the Department of Classical Languages at Hunter College.

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30 Responses

  1. Roy Eugene Peterson

    Chilling morbid tale with a moral message at once fascinating and sad. Creative and imaginative as are all of your intellectual endeavors.

    Reply
    • Joseph S. Salemi

      Brian, thank you for your always sharp and perceptive commentary. When I wrote this piece I had the following thought in my mind: “Mild-mannered and ostensibly reasonable liberals are the pimps for revolutionary radicalism.”

      The “compassionate” and “caring” liberal is always the trailblazing apologist for leftism, and the one who guilt-trips and propagandizes the general population into accepting, step by step, otherwise unacceptable changes.

      I did try to compose the piece as if it were pure drama on a stage. Many of Browning’s monologues are like that, except for the soliloquy-type ones like “Caliban on Setebos.”

      Reply
      • Joseph S. Salemi

        Sorry — this reply was for Brian Yapko.

    • Joseph S. Salemi

      Dear LTC Peterson —

      Thank you for your kind words. Chilling and morbid tales sometimes make the very best poems. I’ll never forget the shock I felt as a child when reading “The Wreck of the Hesperus,” or later on when I read Owen’s “Dulce et Decorum Est.”

      Reply
  2. Paddy Raghunathan

    A very interesting read, Joseph. I usually am not inclined to read longish poems, but I began reading this one, and next thing I know, I was done. Your narration (for it’s more finely written prose than poetry in blank verse) had me hooked.

    Best regards,

    Paddy

    Reply
    • Julian D. Woodruff

      Having written a couple of longer poems myself recently, I’d welcome a discussion of the resistance to extended poetry. (It may not be simply a matter of personal taste.)
      I also find interesting your observation about the piece’s being prose rather than blank verse. I think perhaps Oscar Wilde was getting at something related when he spoke of Coleridge (don’t ask me where) as a writer who was not a poet; but maybe you, Mr. Raghunathan, or another contributor to this site, could amplify.

      Reply
      • Paddy Raghunathan

        Julian,

        Truly, I have nothing against longish poems. The problem I have is a want of time.

        The SCP is now a daily staple, and a wonderful forum for diverse views. I look forward to reading each poem every day, but when it’s short, it’s quick and easy to digest. 🙂

        Best regards,

        Paddy

        FYI…only a couple of weeks ago, I read all of Oscar Wilde’s exquisite poetry. Some of is poems were rather long, but I knew what I was getting into, and invested time accordingly.

      • Joseph S. Salemi

        Dear Julian and Paddy —

        Thank you for your kind comments and observations. Let me argue, however, that this poem is written in ordinary blank verse — that is, iambic pentameter unrhymed lines with traditionally accepted substitutions. I make a point of this because I worry about “creeping perfectionism” in metrical analysis here at the SCP and elsewhere, when some persons argue that iambic pentameter MUST be defined mathematically as five iambs without variation, and anything else is somehow flawed.

        There have been several fights here about this issue (some of them very bitter), and I don’t want to start another one. Let me just say that if a poem in iambic pentameter is allowed to breathe freely, without a corset, then it can have the kind of smooth flow that Paddy describes as “finely written prose.”

      • Paddy Raghunathan

        Indeed Joseph, agree with you totally. Nicely done, and well said.

  3. Cynthia Erlandson

    I agree with Paddy; the story is so well told that once I started reading it, I couldn’t stop.

    Reply
    • Joseph S. Salemi

      Thank you, Cynthia. What you have said is the most important thing that a poet wants — to be interesting and compelling.

      Reply
  4. Julian D. Woodruff

    The compulsion (or fad?) to debeautify or even destroy oneself seems to have grown stronger over the last … what? … 60 years. Piercing, cutting, tattooing, genital mutilation ,,, And it impacts women more than it does men (not that it isn’t often imposed on women … and children). It certainly extends to euthanasia and abortion. Joseph here gives this sociopathy–the roles of both the self-inflicting/victim and abettor (and how far that role extends deserves separate attention)–the hard look that deserves a wide readership.

    Reply
    • Joseph S. Salemi

      Julian, when body-piercing was at its height in the 1990s, I recall advertisements in the papers that had this slogan: REDEFINING BEAUTY. And the accompanying photograph showed a woman’s face with several horrid spikes and studs and metal dots that transformed feminine loveliness into a voodoo-doll pin-cushion.

      I cut out the advertisement, had it enlarged, and distributed xerox copies at every poetry reading where I recited this monologue. You wouldn’t believe the anger and rage and spite that I experienced from many in the audience, from persons who did NOT have such piercings, but who were fanatically dedicated to the idea that they should never be attacked or ridiculed.

      I knew then that we were entering an age of severe psychic pathology. Euthanasia, abortion, transgender mutilation, tattooing — they’re all part of the same demented syndrome.

      Reply
      • Julian D. Woodruff

        Here’s the popular sentiment, Joseph: if you hate the sin (although naturally some stupid circumlocution for that word would be used) you obviously hate the sinner. Whereas you and I might agree that airing our detestation of the sin is loving the sinner, indeed loving all sinners.

  5. Brian A Yapko

    Joe, this is a fascinating and skilled dramatic monologue which paints a portrait of two deeply unsavory characters with great insight and efficiency. The jeweler and the unnamed victim are both personality-types most of us have encountered and it is difficult to say who is worse — the girl who so disrespects herself and her body that she is willing to damage it over and over in the name of “self-expression” or the jeweler who is willing to enable her self-sabotage. That the jeweler has “standards” and will only do it up to a point is infuriating. Someone, somewhere has to be the grown-up in the room and learn to say “no.” That “compassionate” people feel morally obligated or guilt-tripped or easily manipulated into saying yes to even the most outrageous things speaks volumes about their spiritual bankruptcy. As for the girl, in an atheist, mechanistic world where human remains are relegated to compost it’s easy to see how a God-given body can be reduced from a temple to a wall of graffiti. The disrespect of life has real consequences.

    Although I can see its antecedents in Browning, the dramatic setting, the characterizations and the subject matter of your poem actually make me think of a poetic play like “Murder in the Cathedral.” For me, it’s not so much that this monologue approaches prose so much as that it strikes me as an actual monologue in a drama. This would make an arresting (no pun intended) one-act play.

    Reply
  6. Margaret Coats

    Jewelry is made for flesh, to add a gleam
    Of the eternal to our passing clay.

    Wonderful lines to put into the mouth of this jeweler who knows he betrays his business. This becomes clearer and more ludicrous when he tries to persuade the customer to accept HIS limits, telling her to look at the “ghastly mask” of her face transformed by what HE was willing to do. I recall a 19th century novel in which a 16-year-old debutante is adorned with flowers only, because gems are better for a woman no longer in her freshest bloom. An 18-year-old’s “clay” shows the first signs of “passing,” as you might say, Joseph. How far we have fallen!

    If you’ll excuse me for mentioning yet another work of art, a painter whom I knew created a large canvas about the time you wrote this poem. Entitled “Searching for Love,” it showed a girl with multiple body piercings standing forlorn in a subway car. Was she appealing for acceptance or for sympathy or for a wounded partner, or is she hopeless because no guardian or piercing professional would say “no” to her? I’m glad you added the note about complicity of those who affirm and facilitate the doings of self-mutilators.

    Reply
    • Joseph S. Salemi

      Margaret, I wish I could see that canvas. The emptiness and loneliness of those who have succumbed to the mania for piercing must be profound.

      There is something so hateful and self-loathing about this practice that I cannot think of it as being anything other than diabolical. Out of delicacy, I refrained from mentioning in my poem that some women have chosen to have their nipples pierced for small metal dumbbells, and their vaginal lips for the attachment of small bells or ornaments.

      Is this anything other than a manifestation of savage hatred for the human body?

      Reply
  7. Sally Cook

    I recall reading this poem in one of your books, I think it was. In any case I have never forgotten it . The slow, almost hypnotic style perfectly suits the sinister, story.

    Joe, your your work is strong as granite, and as lasting.

    Reply
    • Joseph S. Salemi

      Thank you, Sally. So is yours, both on paper and on canvas!

      Reply
  8. Shaun C. Duncan

    This is a fantastic monologue which neatly encapsultes the essential problem with liberalism – that it seems fine to push the boundaries a little but do it often enough and eventually you find yourself somewhere more awful than you ever expected to be. As someone who was, at the time of the writing of this poem, very much one of the “low musicians” it alludes to, I can attest to the fact that those peers of mine who followed the logic of “do what thou wilt” to its inevitable conclusion too often met a sad but entirely predictable fate.

    Reply
    • Joseph S. Salemi

      Thank you, Shaun. I wrote this in a reverie of impatience and anger, since at the time it seemed to me that nobody was making a peep of protest over self-mutilation. Today the fad seems to have faded somewhat, though I occasionally notice a small silver dot on the nostril of some coeds at school.

      James Burnham was right in his book “Suicide of the West” — liberals are the apologists and pimps for societal collapse and degradation.

      Reply
      • Shaun C. Duncan

        Piercing is passé now that body modification has evolved into more nightmarish configurations. The children of the girls with nose rings are having their genitals removed now.

  9. Susan Jarvis Bryant

    Joe, this is a perfectly crafted chilling piece that reads so smoothly it transcends the page to engulf me in a swirl of images and emotions that have me thinking… deeply. When I was a teenager, my grandmother told me that going out caked in makeup in a dress that left nothing to the imagination would encourage ill ends and that I should dress with her words in mind. At the time, I thought her rather old-fashioned but was mindful of what she’d said… I wore pink lipstick instead of red… a slightly longer hemline… an extra button done up. My dear grandmother would die of shock if she could see how our younger generations are today… many from broken homes with no grandmotherly advice to set them on the right track.

    Now I know the true meaning of the term ‘incrementalism’… little by little, in a very short space of time, we have gone from a grandmother’s concern about low cut dresses and high hemlines to the nightmare of Shaun’s observation on transgender surgery.

    Joe, your poem is especially meaningful today… I believe many people are beginning to wake up… sadly, it may be a little too late. Thank you for opening eyes and minds with your words.

    Reply
    • Joseph S. Salemi

      Susan, your words are always perceptive and meaningful, whenever you comment on a poem. And your accounts of incidents from the past stir up long-buried memories.

      What you mention about your grandmother’s advice concerning how a young girl should dress just did that for me. I recall something from my dating days that reinforces your point. Young men had a term for a girl who used too much or too glaring makeup, and whose clothing was deliberately and provocatively revealing. She was called a “blister,” and the consensus was that you should NOT ask her out, or be seen in public with her. In fact, most men were afraid to go out with a “blister” because she invited a kind of smirking ridicule that reflected badly on you, her date. And to be quite frank, her appearance generally turned off any sexual response that you might have had for her. Your basic impulse was to get away from her as soon as possible. She was embarrassing.

      On the other hand, a girl who dressed modestly and neatly in a skirt, a pretty blouse and sweater, with tasteful shoes, just a touch of makeup and cologne, and her hair done nicely — well, she sent your male hormones into overdrive! You were deeply proud to be seen with her, you took solid pleasure in looking at her and conversing with her, and you were super-attentive to her. You just tingled all over with with erotic response simply by sitting across the table from her.

      I don’t think young women today understand this. Ladies, we men know exactly what’s underneath your clothes — you don’t have to show it to us. And barbaric things like tattoos, body piercings, and inch-thick makeup repulse most guys.

      Reply
      • Joshua C. Frank

        I agree with you 100% on all these points. Trouble is, no one believes it. An older woman once rebuked me for saying I prefer the way a woman looks naturally, without all those cosmetics. She said men say this but can’t tell how much makeup a woman has, if any, and then end up ignoring those who don’t wear lots of makeup. (Wait, how does that work if we supposedly can’t tell the difference?) Yet I have had the exact reactions you describe.

        No wonder young people aren’t marrying—instead of asking what men like, women are telling us what we like, and vice versa.

  10. Sally Cook

    What Susan said of her beloved grandmother’s advice reminds me of my own beloved mama.. My clothes not always had tp meet with her approval, more often than not they had actually been chosen by her I’m thinking now of a particular red sweater.. I wore it into late spring and was pleased I had grown into it so it was very form-fitting. School ended; mama washed it and put it away. When fall came, she brought it out, tried it on me and pronounced it “too small:. Off it went to another child in the neighborhood.

    I was furious. “Why can[‘t I ever have clothes that fit?”” I remarked in disgusted tones? Mama snapped back “You don’t know the meaning of a well-fitting garment. When you learn that, then you may choose your own clothes.

    Mama. Soon I was allowed to choose the color of a coat; the style of a blouse
    And I will never forget being frog-marched into a spare bedroom to have my underwear sewn to my evening gown “just in case.”

    Mama was always teaching us things “just in case” It’s amazing how many of them have come in handy. over the years.!

    Reply
    • Joseph S. Salemi

      Underwear sewn to your evening gown? Wow. That’s like a medieval chastity belt.

      Reply
  11. Joshua C. Frank

    I love this! It’s interesting how this was published in 1997 and yet a lot of it applies to today’s transgender-surgery doctors. I’ve always thought piercings were gross, especially in nonstandard places. Why punch a hole in yourself like that when you don’t even have to?

    Yesterday piercings, today genital mutilation. I hate to think what’s coming next!

    Reply
    • Sally Cook

      Well, I did read somewhere of a gruesome fad which some deluded people have had limbs removed. Why? As a bid for sympathy? Difficult even to imagine – I shudder at the thought.

      Reply

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