This conference paper describes how the phrase "picture bride" is used as a metaphor in ethnic poetry. It is used in poems which concern female creativity in the areas of art and housekeeping. The phrase represents the fusion of concepts and ideas which are usually thought of in juxtaposition with each other. These concepts and ideas are the following; (1) female/male; (2) west/east; (3) feminist/sexist; (4) rural/urban; (5) outdoors/indoors; (6) contemporary/historical; (7) liberation/constraint; and (8) experimental/traditional. These contrasts represent the works of two artists who exemplify these ideas in their artworks. The poet weaves together the contrasting perspectives of the two artists by combining their artistic metaphors into verse. For example, the white towel referred to in one of the poems is an allusion to both the skin of powdered women in the painting of one artist and the bleached bones of the desert in a painting of the other. Such ethnic poetry in the United States demonstrates that people whose origins are in the third world remain conscious of those roots. This artistic expression provides a model for enacting cultural pluralism. (VM)