This Vote Is Legally Binding

tkingfisher:

In response to all those articles about talking to women with headphones…

Someone always says it, whenever it comes up:
“I guess I’m just not allowed to talk to anyone any more!”

Well.
Yes.
It is my duty to inform you that we took a vote
all us women
and determined that you are not allowed to talk to anyone
ever again.

This vote is legally binding.

Yes, of course, all women know each other,
the way you always suspected.
(Incidentally, so do Canadians. I’m just throwing that out there.)
We went into the women’s room at the Applebee’s at the corner of 54
and all the others streamed in through the doors
into that endless liminal space,
a chain of humans stretching backward
heavy skulled Neanderthal women laughing with New York socialites,
Lucille Ball hand in hand with the Taung child.
We sat around in the couches in the women’s room
(I know you’ve always been suspicious of those couches)
and chatted with each other in the secret female language
that you always knew existed.
Somebody set up a console–
the Empress Wu is ruthless at Mario Kart
and Cleopatra never learned to lose
and a woman who ruled an empire that fell
when the Sea People came
and left no trace
can use the blue shell like a surgical instrument.

Eventually we took the vote.
You had three defenders:
your grandmother and your first-grade teacher
and an Albanian nun who believes the best of everybody.
Your mom abstained.
It was duly recorded in the secret notebooks
that have been kept under the couch in the Applebee’s
since the beginning of recorded time.
And then we went back to playing Mario Kart
and Hoelun took off her bra
and we didn’t think about you again
except that I had to carry this message.

So anyway
good luck with that
it’s just as you always said it was.
Hush now,
no talking

hush.

A World for Poets

This is not a world for poets.
There are no wild debauched summers
or liquor-soaked gutters
waiting in my future.

I’m far too practical for that;
aren’t we all?
Don’t the writers switch majors two semesters in,
three at the most
(and only if you’re especially stubborn),
to something more likely to pay the bills,
the toll charged for living a life
not one of us asked for, or elected to begin?

But once begun–
through no fault of our own–|
we find it hard to give up the habit.

After all, a girl’s gotta eat,
and poetry doesn’t put food on the table
unless you can put it to music|
(and often not even then).

But imagine a world that was built for poets:
readings like rock concerts,
red carpet book signings,
gaggles of children
lining up to tell you
|which lines changed their lives,
or saved them.

Or even just a line in the paper,
under job listings:
Wanted: full-time poet.
Competitive pay, full benefits, room for advancement. Inquire in person.

What a lovely world,
in which the making of art is considered
no less vital than the making of the latest model Ford.

In this world, I arrive at the Tennyson Awards
dressed all in gold.
When they call my name I pretend to be shocked.
I walk gracefully to the podium with a prepared speech in my pocket
and thank my parents and my editor
with that golden pen statue held aloft
in my perfectly manicured hand.

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.

Mary Oliver, from “Wild Geese” in Dream Work
(via merulae)

Old Tom Graves

Old Tom Graves
He’s got arms for days
You can try to hide but he
Knows these caves.

And Old Tom he’s
Got tricks up his sleeves
You can try to run but there’s so
Much he sees.

That graveyard man
He won’t show his hand
You might wanna beg ‘cause there’s
Eyes in the back of his head.

Old Tom Graves
Collects what souls he saves
And he serves them up with
Ice cold lemonade.

And that flint-eyed shadow
Gonna make you sad, oh
You were ever born when he
Comes tomorrow.

That skeleton grinner’s
Comin’ for you, sinner
and he’ll serve you up for
Thanksgiving dinner.

Tommy Winter

The reddest rose’s petals still fall
when Tommy Winter comes to call.
He broke your favorite China doll and
buried her in a shoebox coffin.
Crocodile tears for bits of porcelain
that never will be whole again.

Tommy gets his jollies killing virgins.
Everyone around him wears a frown.
You wouldn’t pet a rabid dog,
so don’t let Tommy follow you home.
He’ll always find a way to put you down.

A longdrawn carol, mournful, holy,

She chanted loudly, chanted lowly,

Till her eyes were darken’d wholly,

And her smooth face sharpen’d slowly,
       Turn’d to tower’d Camelot:

For ere she reach’d upon the tide

The first house by the water-side,

Singing in her song she died,

The Lady of Shalott. 
– from “The Lady of Shalott” by Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Bad Reasons to Have Children

Grow up too fast,
bypass a dream,
desire to see the dream fulfilled.
A rosy notion,
a grand idea,
of what the future will be like.

Desire for love,
and legacy,
desire to love with all your might.
A pretty doll,
A source of pride,
an extra smile on the Christmas cards.

A helping hand,
a caring presence,
guaranteed for you in the twilight years.
A chance to fix
the past’s mistakes,
to do it better than your parents did.

Or else a gift
for a job well done,
a thank-you for your parents’ love.
Or just because
it’s what you do
when ticking off fulfillment’s boxes.

The pride, the joy,
the love, the hope,
the passing on of family names:
The selfish burden
placed on children
by those who never ponder “should.”

Father, oh father, go dig my grave,
Make it both long and narrow.
Lord William died for me today.
I’ll die for him tomorrow.

They laid her to rest in the old churchyard.
Lord William was buried beside her.
And out of his heart grew a blood-red rose,
And out of hers, a briar.

They grew and grew in the old churchyard
Till they could grow no higher.
At the end they formed a true lover’s knot:
The red rose and the briar.

– from “Barbara Allen”

She cried, “Laura,” up the garden,
“Did you miss me?
Come and kiss me.
Never mind my bruises,
Hug me, kiss me, suck my juices
Squeez’d from goblin fruits for you,
Goblin pulp and goblin dew.
Eat me, drink me, love me;
Laura, make much of me;
For your sake I have braved the glen
And had to do with goblin merchant men.”

– from “Goblin Market” by Christina Rossetti