What Do Women Want?

I want a red dress.
I want it flimsy and cheap,
I want it too tight, I want to wear it
until someone tears it off me.
I want it sleeveless and backless,
this dress, so no one has to guess
what’s underneath. I want to walk down
the street past Thrifty’s and the hardware store
with all those keys glittering in the window,
past Mr. and Mrs. Wong selling day-old
donuts in their café, past the Guerra brothers
slinging pigs from the truck and onto the dolly,
hoisting the slick snouts over their shoulders.
I want to walk like I’m the only
woman on earth and I can have my pick.
I want that red dress bad.
I want it to confirm
your worst fears about me,
to show you how little I care about you
or anything except what
I want. When I find it, I’ll pull that garment
from its hanger like I’m choosing a body
to carry me into this world, through
the birth-cries and the love-cries too,
and I’ll wear it like bones, like skin,
it’ll be the goddamned
dress they bury me in.

– Kim Addonizio

Postscript:

Isn’t this supposed to be one of those eternal questions? What *do* women want, anyway? The same things that men do, sometimes. Different things, sometimes.

The question is a strange one, if you think about it – no one asks what men want as though they were all one homogenous entity, and that’s only the beginning of the problem with this kind of question. This poem addresses the universal in the specifics of what this particular woman wants.

Hear the poem being read out here.

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Published:
April 1, 2011 – 08:00
Author:
By Madhu
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In a Beautiful Country

A good way to fall in love
is to turn off the headlights
and drive very fast down dark roads.

Another way to fall in love
is to say they are only mints
and swallow them with a strong drink.

Then it is autumn in the body.
Your hands are cold.
Then it is winter and we are still at war.

The gold-haired girl is singing into your ear
about how we live in a beautiful country.
Snow sifts from the clouds

into your drink. It doesn’t matter about the war.
A good way to fall in love
is to close up the garage and turn the engine on,

then down you’ll fall through lovely mists
as a body might fall early one morning
from a high window into love. Love,

the broken glass. Love, the scissors
and the water basin. A good way to fall
is with a rope to catch you.

A good way is with something to drink
to help you march forward.
The gold-haired girl says, Don’t worry

about the armies, says, We live in a time
full of love. You’re thinking about this too much.
Slow down. Nothing bad will happen.

– Kevin Prufer

Postscript:

The contrast between falling in love (in very dangerous ways) and the golden haired girl telling the narrator to ignore the war is pointed and powerful.

The fact that he seems suicidal makes you wonder if the girl’s voice is in his head, and listening to her would be as suicidal as the rest of it (and as attractive-sounding to someone wanting to end it all). Even if she’s real, she’s still unhelpful at best.

Some biographical information on Kevin Prufer.

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Published:
March 31, 2011 – 08:00
Author:
By Madhu
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Cartoon Physics, part 1

Children under, say, ten, shouldn’t know
that the universe is ever-expanding,
inexorably pushing into the vacuum, galaxies

swallowed by galaxies, whole

solar systems collapsing, all of it
acted out in silence. At ten we are still learning

the rules of cartoon animation,

that if a man draws a door on a rock
only he can pass through it.
Anyone else who tries

will crash into the rock. Ten-year-olds
should stick with burning houses, car wrecks,
ships going down—earthbound, tangible

disasters, arenas

where they can be heroes. You can run
back into a burning house, sinking ships

have lifeboats, the trucks will come
with their ladders, if you jump

you will be saved. A child

places her hand on the roof of a schoolbus,
& drives across a city of sand. She knows

the exact spot it will skid, at which point
the bridge will give, who will swim to safety
& who will be pulled under by sharks. She will learn

that if a man runs off the edge of a cliff
he will not fall

until he notices his mistake.

– Nick Flynn

Postscript:

A wryly amusing look at a child’s view of physics – but made sharply poignant and perhaps even a little unsettling by the end because of the choice of potential disaster. It starts relatively innocuously and impersonally with an expanding universe and travelling through solid objects, and works its way through burning houses, car wrecks and sinking ships, eventually getting to the extremely personal incidents of being shark-feed and falling off a cliff.

Nick Flynn, from what I’ve read seems to be someone who’s seen quite a bit, and the hints of darkness ring true.

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Published:
March 30, 2011 – 08:00
Author:
By Madhu
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