Auguste Toulmouche, French
When Rebecca Practiced For Her First Kiss With the Count, It Felt So Real She Could Practically Smell His After-Shave. Or Was That Windex?, 1889
Oil on canvas
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Info, or links that point to more info, about this artist can be found here (archived if necessary), here, here (can be read in full for free on Fridays), here, here, here, here, here, here, and here, perhaps in addition to what’s in his Wikipedia page (Google translated French Wikipedia page has more).
/// Babette kissing her image shows Vanity.
Choosing glass over flesh is insanity.
When men tried osculation
she would threaten castration.
Oh, (they’re shot down in flames) the humanity!
/// Men would stand in line waiting their turn,
in vain hope that a kiss they could earn.
Puffed-up egos went limp
because, just like that blimp,
in the end they would all crash and burn.
/// She is lovely, why does she take such
drastic steps to avoid human touch?
She gets licked by her pooch.
Is a man’s sloppy smooch
any worse? On reflection— not much.
/// A cold mirror can’t kiss or caress.
But it also can’t paw at her dress.
it will not obsess
and try to possess,
or lead to a pregnancy mess.
/// So, Babette chooses not to surrender
to the men who attempt to befriend her.
What appeals in her glass
is a sexy young lass.
Perhaps males are, for her, the wrong gender.
/// She had come to the glass to adjust
and improve how her dress framed her bust.
She thought, “Were I a twin
I am sure we’d give in
to a mad and incestuous lust.”
/// Through the looking glass, once, as a child
Alice ventured; the outcome was wild.
In her pretty pink dress
she recalls playing chess
and becoming a Queen. Alice smiled.
/// Tinted halfway between Red and White,
she’d accepted the aid of a Knight.
Reached the end of the board
both acclaimed and adored.
Now she kisses herself in delight.
/// Windex moistens her clothing and bedding.
If this keeps up, we know where it’s heading.
She will grow even keener
on that blue window cleaner,
like the Dad in My Big Fat Greek Wedding.
> or <
/// She feels tortured like Biblical Job
when she’s kissed with a deep lingual probe.
Her clean mirror at home
has no microbiome,
to disgust this extreme germaphobe.