short poems about beauty

Beauty can be a blessing or a curse or a thrill or a cudgel. These short poems use beauty as a metaphor, mock rigid standards of beauty, and more. We hope you enjoy them.

This short poem is about how eating disorders intersect with beauty culture (e.g., “they”).

starve

Hey Lady Large, they said,
kindly take up less space,
starve away cell by cell
‘til you know your place.
So she modified her diet,
lived on hunger, hope and air,
reduced herself bit by bit
‘til there was no one there.

This short poem gently punctures the assumptions we make about the beautiful.

monsters

Her beauty is
her sustenance.
Like a dark
magnet, it
draws monsters
from their dens.
They follow
her home and
scratch at her door
until she brings
them inside and
kills/
cleans/
eats them.

This short poem is about the beauty of endings. Its title, coda, refers to a movement at the end of a symphony or a dance.

coda

the cares of the day
are put away.
light fades.
stars open their
brilliant eyes
and an old woman
looks up from
her porch and smiles.

the end is as beautiful
as the beginning.

This short poem is an alternative, and much creepier, version of Sleeping Beauty.

creeping beauty

He oozed with charm,
or so he thought,
he did no harm,
or so he said,
don’t be alarmed,
he murmured,
watching Sleeping Beauty
through her glass coffin,
fogging the lid with his breath,
licking his lips, and…

This short poem suggests that beauty sometimes hides a deeper truth.

liar

Liar on a wire,
hanging by
a thread,
truth swings
her scythe,
wants you dead
for trying to hide
her scarred face
with a veil of beauty.

This short poem is about the beauty of the scars we collect from living and giving.

scars

her flesh is
lined/
wrinkled/
marked/
worn from
years of
service/
her beauty
is written
in her scars

This short poem is about how the pursuit of beauty can diminish us.

whittling

she pares herself
one layer at a time,
each more tender
than the last,
hoping to find
something beautiful,
before she disappears.

This short poem is about the folly of comparing yourself to others.

daisy

They say Daisy
is pretty,
but Rose
is sublime.
Now Daisy is
melancholy.
She wishes she were
beautiful.

This short poem objects obliquely to beautiful footwear that also pinches our feet.

barefoot

The click clack
of her heels
on the pavement
was a metronome
for an anxious
song of chasing
handsome
phantoms,
tripping into traps,
being a wide-footed
booby in a city
of angry swans.

So she strayed
from the arcade,
slipped off her shoes,
and ran away
on bare feet.

This short poem is about the tyrannical and often irrational beauty standards women face in many modern cultures.

too

she is too
fat/thin
tall/short
dark/light
strong/weak
big/small
curly/straight
butch/femme
for beauty

This short poem looks at how beauty standards can often double as a straitjacket.

beauty boxed

beauty is
a box,
a tastefully
wrapped
set of limits
that may stunt
your growth

This short poem is about the unhealthy things we do for beauty.

bound

her body
was too loose
and free,
so she bound it,
wrapping it
tighter/
tighter/
tighter/
until she
couldn’t speak
a single word,
not even
Help

This short poem is about how unruly bodies may fight back against our efforts to make them fit standards of beauty.

clay

her body is
stubborn clay,
denying the
sculptor’s vision
of beauty.

it takes
any damn shape
it wants.

This short poem is about the awesome ubiquity of beauty if you look.

the beautiful one

some talk
some walk
some sing
some yell
some whisper
some warn
some squeal
some soothe
some yelp
some help
they’re all
beautiful
when they’re
being themselves