why you are purrrrfect
I got the book yesterday, and I couldn't believe it, couldn't believe when I opened up the first essay. I was so happy. Very, very, very.... Here's a poem I wrote years ago. It was published in a edgey little magazine in SF. It's about then and them and that. It's kind of long....
White Dress (Possession)
“No more interiors should be painted, no people reading and
women knitting. They should be living people who breathe,
feel, suffer, and love. People shall understand the holy
quality about them and bare their heads before them as if in
church.” Edward Munch, diary entry 1889.
1.
I can tell you: To inspire a painter
to depict your face, recline, nude, on your
back in front of his easel. And this:
To quicken a dramatist to write of your virtue,
touch yourself blatantly and for pleasure
in his view, then indignantly refuse
him when he comes to your bed. Finally, this:
There is no man worth having
who is not an artist.
2.
See: a ruffled pinafore, petite,
pale feet. Quiet milky smell of pastries
and cocoa coming warm and
sticky from my tongue. My photograph,
sitting atop the piano: bruised
lips and long, dark hair. See me here,
my porcelain doll, heart-shaped locket.
At six, five even, a woman, a femme
fatale, perfect polarity between madonna and
magdalen. Men find me lyrical-virginal
and seductive. Swinging creaky in the bright
light of the portico, sipping sweet French
sodas through paper straws, I am lullaby,
siren-song. Licking my lips, I find a promise-
ladies’ teas, raunchy cabarets.
Warm summer days, I pour into the sunshine
in thin, transparent dresses, my papa a puppy trailing
behind me. I walk on my hands across the lawn, sun
on my bare stomach and chest, Papa’s eyes
on only me, croquet mallet at rest on his shoulder.
One warm summer day, laughing and dancing
on a Sunday picnic with Papa, he scoops me
up and lands us both in the pillows of wildflowers.
And that time, a pair of white suede boots
from Barcelona.
And the next, a silver charm bracelet.
Of course you pity me.
You may even pity him.
But I have said proudly, mostly while drinking,
“My papa couldn’t keep his hands off me.”
I have said proudly, “My papa showed me
how a woman can own a man,”
how a woman can have whatever she desires, if only.
And I have drank too much sometimes,
and cursed him.
My papa was a merchant or a banker or
a shipbuilder. I can’t remember. Yet,
his face, unforgettable, hovers here now,
in these final, leaden moments, a mask across
the visages of so many faceless lovers.
It is he, I think, who stands there in the street.
It is he who has always stood there, lovingly
holding the revolver to my head.
3.
See me here, a comely, hale Norwegian girl,
in a time when faded linens, bedridden ghouls
like Krohg’s sister were the epitome of beauty.
See my lips, red with rouge or cabernet,
my tongue often running along their surface.
See the way I hold my head, my eyes-no
lover once mistook me for a coquette.
As I walk through the streets of Christiania,
Paris, or Berlin, men follow me, mesmerized
by the movement of my flesh beneath my dresses.
And often I turn and face them, hurry with them
to little hotels on side streets, to small, musty
rooms up flights of stairs, to unfamiliar beds.
“She fucks like a man,” my husband boasts
to friends at the café in Berlin, his index finger
traveling the length of my jawbone. Stupid of him
not to think of how they would clandestinely run
paint-stained hands across my ass at gallery openings,
brush forearms across my breasts while passing pages
of manuscripts around tables of the crowded
bars we inhabited then-stupid not to predict
their curiosity about a woman who must
surely eschew monogamy, who loves
to fuck, who fucks like a man.
Stupid of me, to marry an intellectual, an espouser
of free love, a hypocrite who spends afternoons riding
the backs of other men’s tasty wives, who ties
me to his bed like a promiscuous daughter.
Stupid of me, turning to hear my name
in the crowded street, in the wind, in my white
dress, turning in time to the chamber of his
revolver, a sullen adagio.
4.
Here we are on our wedding day-see?
What a lark we thought it, to hang our
white sheets, stained only with semen and sweat,
from the window of our bridal room. To proclaim
to the miserable below our mutual disregard
for virginity, for traditional wedding night formality.
We howled and relished that-we, the sophisticates.
How sublime we were
in all we said and did.
5.
Stupid of me, turning, turning in the crowded
street, in the wind, in my white dress.
It is he, I think, who stands
there in the street.
Turning, in the crowded street. He says,
a fire burns inside of me, a fire
like honey aflame. He only wants to touch
the fire. Be still, he says.
Love hurts at first. A pair of white
boots from Barcelona. A silver charm
bracelet. Turning, in the wind.
What else, he says, is there to the concept
of love, if not this movement of bodies?
If I were any other woman, he says. Our
bridal room. How sublime. Turning
in time to the chamber of his revolver.
And now he stands here-febrile, prurient:
righteous in his proprietorship,
eager to consume me.
See us in this: We will both die today.
Of course you pity him.
You may even pity me.
Around us, people continue on without interest.
Newsboys and flower sellers hawk their goods,
horses trot carriages through the rutted road.
Even my lover has drifted off somewhere.
See me, finally: my dress is white,
pristine and virginal-at hand, at last, to bear
the hymeneal stain of our marriage.
I blink, and he takes me
while my eyes are closed.
White Dress (Possession)
“No more interiors should be painted, no people reading and
women knitting. They should be living people who breathe,
feel, suffer, and love. People shall understand the holy
quality about them and bare their heads before them as if in
church.” Edward Munch, diary entry 1889.
1.
I can tell you: To inspire a painter
to depict your face, recline, nude, on your
back in front of his easel. And this:
To quicken a dramatist to write of your virtue,
touch yourself blatantly and for pleasure
in his view, then indignantly refuse
him when he comes to your bed. Finally, this:
There is no man worth having
who is not an artist.
2.
See: a ruffled pinafore, petite,
pale feet. Quiet milky smell of pastries
and cocoa coming warm and
sticky from my tongue. My photograph,
sitting atop the piano: bruised
lips and long, dark hair. See me here,
my porcelain doll, heart-shaped locket.
At six, five even, a woman, a femme
fatale, perfect polarity between madonna and
magdalen. Men find me lyrical-virginal
and seductive. Swinging creaky in the bright
light of the portico, sipping sweet French
sodas through paper straws, I am lullaby,
siren-song. Licking my lips, I find a promise-
ladies’ teas, raunchy cabarets.
Warm summer days, I pour into the sunshine
in thin, transparent dresses, my papa a puppy trailing
behind me. I walk on my hands across the lawn, sun
on my bare stomach and chest, Papa’s eyes
on only me, croquet mallet at rest on his shoulder.
One warm summer day, laughing and dancing
on a Sunday picnic with Papa, he scoops me
up and lands us both in the pillows of wildflowers.
And that time, a pair of white suede boots
from Barcelona.
And the next, a silver charm bracelet.
Of course you pity me.
You may even pity him.
But I have said proudly, mostly while drinking,
“My papa couldn’t keep his hands off me.”
I have said proudly, “My papa showed me
how a woman can own a man,”
how a woman can have whatever she desires, if only.
And I have drank too much sometimes,
and cursed him.
My papa was a merchant or a banker or
a shipbuilder. I can’t remember. Yet,
his face, unforgettable, hovers here now,
in these final, leaden moments, a mask across
the visages of so many faceless lovers.
It is he, I think, who stands there in the street.
It is he who has always stood there, lovingly
holding the revolver to my head.
3.
See me here, a comely, hale Norwegian girl,
in a time when faded linens, bedridden ghouls
like Krohg’s sister were the epitome of beauty.
See my lips, red with rouge or cabernet,
my tongue often running along their surface.
See the way I hold my head, my eyes-no
lover once mistook me for a coquette.
As I walk through the streets of Christiania,
Paris, or Berlin, men follow me, mesmerized
by the movement of my flesh beneath my dresses.
And often I turn and face them, hurry with them
to little hotels on side streets, to small, musty
rooms up flights of stairs, to unfamiliar beds.
“She fucks like a man,” my husband boasts
to friends at the café in Berlin, his index finger
traveling the length of my jawbone. Stupid of him
not to think of how they would clandestinely run
paint-stained hands across my ass at gallery openings,
brush forearms across my breasts while passing pages
of manuscripts around tables of the crowded
bars we inhabited then-stupid not to predict
their curiosity about a woman who must
surely eschew monogamy, who loves
to fuck, who fucks like a man.
Stupid of me, to marry an intellectual, an espouser
of free love, a hypocrite who spends afternoons riding
the backs of other men’s tasty wives, who ties
me to his bed like a promiscuous daughter.
Stupid of me, turning to hear my name
in the crowded street, in the wind, in my white
dress, turning in time to the chamber of his
revolver, a sullen adagio.
4.
Here we are on our wedding day-see?
What a lark we thought it, to hang our
white sheets, stained only with semen and sweat,
from the window of our bridal room. To proclaim
to the miserable below our mutual disregard
for virginity, for traditional wedding night formality.
We howled and relished that-we, the sophisticates.
How sublime we were
in all we said and did.
5.
Stupid of me, turning, turning in the crowded
street, in the wind, in my white dress.
It is he, I think, who stands
there in the street.
Turning, in the crowded street. He says,
a fire burns inside of me, a fire
like honey aflame. He only wants to touch
the fire. Be still, he says.
Love hurts at first. A pair of white
boots from Barcelona. A silver charm
bracelet. Turning, in the wind.
What else, he says, is there to the concept
of love, if not this movement of bodies?
If I were any other woman, he says. Our
bridal room. How sublime. Turning
in time to the chamber of his revolver.
And now he stands here-febrile, prurient:
righteous in his proprietorship,
eager to consume me.
See us in this: We will both die today.
Of course you pity him.
You may even pity me.
Around us, people continue on without interest.
Newsboys and flower sellers hawk their goods,
horses trot carriages through the rutted road.
Even my lover has drifted off somewhere.
See me, finally: my dress is white,
pristine and virginal-at hand, at last, to bear
the hymeneal stain of our marriage.
I blink, and he takes me
while my eyes are closed.