Kinky
They decide to exchange heads.
Barbie squeezes the small opening under her chin
over Ken's bulging neck socket. His wide jaw line jostles
atop his girlfriend's body, loosely,
like one of those novelty dogs
destined to gaze from the back windows of cars.
The two dolls chase each other around the orange Country Camper
unsure what they'll do when they're within touching distance.
Ken wants to feel Barbie's toes between his lips,
take off one of her legs and force his whole arm inside her.
With only the vaguest suggestion of genitals,
all the alluring qualities they possess as fashion dolls,
up until now, have done neither of them much good.
But suddenly Barbie is excited looking at her own body
under the weight of Ken's face. He is part circus freak,
part thwarted hermaphrodite. And she is imagining
she is somebody else-- maybe somebody middle class and ordinary,
maybe another teenage model being caught in a scandal.
The night had begun with Barbie getting angry
at finding Ken's blow up doll, folded and stuffed
under the couch. He was defensive and ashamed, especially about
not having the breath to inflate her. But after a round
of pretend-tears, Barbie and Ken vowed to try
to make their relationship work. With their good memories
as sustaining as good food, they listened to late-night radio
talk shows, one featuring Doctor Ruth. When all else fails,
just hold each other, the small sex therapist crooned.
Barbie and Ken, on cue, groped in the dark,
their interchangeable skin glowing, the color of Band-Aids.
Then, they let themselves go-- Soon Barbie was begging Ken
to try on her spandex miniskirt. She showed him how
to pivot as though he was on a runway. Ken begged
to tie Barbie onto his yellow surfboard and spin her
on the kitcen table until she grew dizzy. Anything,
anything, they both said to the other's requests,
their mirrored desires bubbling from the most unlikely places.*****
Snow White's Acne
At first she was sure it was just a bit of dried strawberry juice,
or a fleck of her mother's red nail polish that had flaked off
when she'd patted her daughter to sleep the night before.
But as she scrubbed, Snow felt a bump, something festering
under the surface, like a tapeworm curled up and living
in her left cheek.
Doc the Dwarf was no dermatologist
and besides Snow doesn't get to meet him in this version
because the mint leaves the tall doctor puts over her face
only make matters worse. Snow and the Queen hope
against hope for chicken pox, measles, something
that would be gone quickly and not plague Snow's whole
adolescence.
If only freckles were red, she cried, if only
concealer really worked. Soon came the pus, the yellow dots,
multiplying like pins in a pin cushion. Soon came
the greasy hair. The Queen gave her daughter a razor
for her legs and a stick of underarm deodorant.
Snow
doodled through her teenage years—"Snow + ?" in Magic
Markered hearts all over her notebooks. She was an average
student, a daydreamer who might have been a scholar
if she'd only applied herself. She liked sappy music
and romance novels. She liked pies and cake
instead of fruit.
The Queen remained the fairest in the land.
It was hard on Snow, having such a glamorous mom.
She rebelled by wearing torn shawls and baggy gowns.
Her mother would sometimes say, "Snow darling,
why don't you pull back your hair? Show those pretty eyes?"
or "Come on, I'll take you shopping."
Snow preferred
staying in her safe room, looking out of her window
at the deer leaping across the lawn. Or she'd practice
her dance moves with invisible princes. And the Queen,
busy being Queen, didn't like to push it.*****
Buddhist Barbie
In the 5th century B.C.
an Indian philosopher
Gautama teaches "All is emptiness"
and "There is no self."
In the 20th century A.D.
Barbie agrees, but wonders how a man
with such a belly could pose,
smiling, and without a shirt.*****
On Being Born The Same Exact Day Of The Same Exact Year As Boy George
We must have clamored for the same mother, hurried for
the same womb.
I know it now as I read that my birthday is his.
Since the first time I saw his picture, I sensed something—
and with a fierce bonding and animosity
began following his career.
Look where I am and look where he is!
There is a book documenting his every haircut
while all my image-building attempts go unnoticed, even
by my friends.
I'm too wimpy to just dye my curls red
or get them straightened. I, sickeningly moral,
talked about chemicals when I should have been
hanging out with George's pal, Marilyn.
He would have set me right:
Stop your whining and put on this feather tuxedo. Look,
do you want to be famous or not?
In the latest articles, Boy George is claiming he's not
really happy. Hmm, I think, just like me.
When he comes to New York and stays in hotels in
Gramercy Park
maybe he feels a pull to the Lower East Side,
wanders towards places where I am, but not knowing me,
doesn't know why.
One interviewer asks if he wishes he were a woman.
Aha! I read on with passion: and a poet?—I bet you'd like
that—
You wouldn't have to sing anymore, do those tiring tours.
George, we could switch. You could come live at my place,
have some privacy, regain your sense of self.
So I begin my letter. Dear Boy George,
Do you ever sit and wonder what's gone wrong?
If there's been some initial mistake?
Well, don't be alarmed, but there
has been.
Denise Duhamel is the deepest or most important poet around, but she's fun to read -- and she's cute, which never hurts a poet, man or woman. I enjoy her pop culture references -- generally considered the death-touch for a poem, since it becomes confined to a specific time and place -- and her unique version of feminism.
The poems here were all copied from the web, so my guess is that -- having seen her work in magazines -- some of the formatting is gone. The operator of the website where I found these doesn't say.
Here is some biography from The Academy of American Poets:
Denise Duhamel was born in Woonsocket, Rhode Island, in 1961. She received a B.F.A. degree from Emerson College and a M.F.A. degree from Sarah Lawrence College.
She is the author of numerous books and chapbooks of poetry. Her most recent titles are Two and Two (University of Pittsburgh, 2005) and Mille et un sentiments (Firewheel Editions, 2005).
Her other books currently in print are Queen for a Day: Selected and New Poems (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2001), The Star-Spangled Banner, winner of the Crab Orchard Poetry Prize (1999); Kinky (1997); Girl Soldier (1996); and How the Sky Fell (1996).
In response to Duhamel's collection Smile!, Edward Field says, "More than any other poet I know, Denise Duhamel, for all the witty, polished surface of her poems, communicates the ache of human existence."
Duhamel has also collaborated with Maureen Seaton on three volumes: Little Novels, Oyl, and Exquisite Politics. She co-edited with Nick Carbó the anthology Sweet Jesus: Poems About the Ultimate Icon. A winner of an National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, she has been anthologized widely, including four volumes of The Best American Poetry (2000, 1998, 1994, and 1993).
Duhamel teaches creative writing and literature at Florida International University and lives in Hollywood, FL, with her husband, the poet Nick Carbó.
The following poems are from a book called The Woman with Two Vaginas: erotic eskimo tales in poetry. If such things offend you, please do not read any further on this post.
LEARNING HOW TO MAKE LOVE
This couple couldn't figure it out.
The man licked his wife's genitals while she stared straight ahead.
The woman poked her husband's testicles with her nose.
The man put his toe in the folds of the woman's vulva.
The woman took the man's penis under her armpit.
Neither one of them wanted to be the first to admit
something was off. So it went on-
the man put his finger in his wife's navel.
The woman batted her eyelashes against the arch of her husband's foot.
They pinched each other's earlobes. They bit each other's rear ends.
To perpetrate the lie, they ended each encounter with a deep sigh.
Then one day while the husband was hunting,
a man stopped by the igloo and said to the wife:
I hear you have been having trouble.
I can show you how to make love.
He took her to bed and left before the husband came home.
Then the wife showed her husband,
careful to make it seem like the idea sprang
from both. After all these years of rubbing one's face against the other's belly
or stroking a male elbow behind a female knee,
this couple had a lot of catching up to do. They couldn't stop to eat or sleep
and grew so skinny they died. No one found them for a long time.
And by then, their two skeletons were fused into one.*****
THE RAPING OF THE SUN
The dance house was dark
when a wind blew out all the lamps.
The singing continued in the blackness
while a boy raped a young girl.
He ran away just before the lamps
were re-lit, and the girl, crying,
made her way home on the crunchy snow.
She was a girl who loved to dance
and didn't want this pleasure taken from her,
so the next night she returned to the dance house
with soot on her hands, so that if this violence
happened again, she'd dirty
her attacker's back. After the second time-
the terrifying darkness, the pain, the rekindle-
the girl saw her palm prints on her brother's parka.
She cried, "Such things ar unheard of!"
Her body still felt the ache of his presence
as she took a sharp knife and cut off both her breasts.
She flung them into his hands, screaming,
"You seem to have a taste for my body- Eat these!"
He held her bleeding breats, in shock.
She grabbed a torch and fled the dance house.
No one is sure if the brother meant to apologize
or simply attack his sister again, when he followed,
stumbling and falling, snow putting out the flames
of his torch so that only it's embers flickered.
A wind, more colossal than the one that disturbed
the dance hall lamps, lifted the man
and his breastless sister up high into the sky.
The girl became the sun who does all she can
to alleviate the danger of the dark.
She stays as far away as possible
from her brother, the cold dim moon.
Denise Duhamel on the web:
~ From a fan site:
* The Woman With Two Vaginas
* Kinky
* Girl Soldier
* Exquisite Politics
~ The Academy of American Poets
~ Famous Poets and Poems
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