monday poem #201: Anne Shaw, "drag king manifesto"

[heresluck]

One of my favorite things about my favorite indie bookstores is that I can walk in and go to the poetry section and pick up whatever's featured, whatever staff picks have a note on them, and know that if I take them home I will at the very least end up with something interesting - and sometimes with something amazing that I would never have found otherwise. Which is what happened here.

drag king manifesto

That woman is an engine, I refuse. To generate. To be chambered. To combust.

Let her who would acquire done the masculine article. The necktie and the
              wingtip and the the.
The leather chair, its kingdom. As wispy shadow tidies in the wake.

I too unhitch my notice. I touch what I will touch. I wear
              roulette-wheel cufflinks
and filch the jack of diamonds from the deck.

I'll show you how to razor: Take off your gown of ghosts. Untie
              your solaces, unzip your name.

Let her who would be pirate begin in piracy. The double-breasted suit.
              The clamp.
Adam's apple pendant in the throat.

Let her who would go veiled take up her wrench, her drill. Up her sleeve
              the jackal of hearts, the jack of jills.

Let her in frilled distress begin. To study the mallet, the screw.

And therefore tinker. Therefore crux. How treason wears the pants.

Let her who would go naked smith her tool.

- Anne Shaw
from Undertow