Mouth to Mouth
Never was a cornflake girl.
Tori Amos, Cornflake Girl
It should not alarm you that I despise
something other than myself. I’m not
a feminist for nothing or else all those Tori
Amos songs taught me zilch about owning
a vagina. Yeah, sometimes I peruse through
the make-up aisle and think about lip gloss
and how nice it would be to dab its glistening
guarantee of sex on my dry mouth. But then
I remember that when I turn my head too fast
my hair sometimes gets stuck in this new cosmetic
radiance on my face and I want to go back to the bare
essentials of my own matte lips. I have always loved
experimenting with you and your love for me.
You always tease me about my reflection
and how you catch me looking at it after a bath--
how I still turn sideways and suck in my tummy,
how I won’t dye my hair, but I still paint my nails.
I look forward to the day when I can like the thought
of liking myself without the need for any woman
with unshaved or plastic body parts to tell me
what I should be. I wonder what the first woman
was like before other women came along. I wonder
who told her how to be?
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3 comments:
Trista, I really liked the bareness of this draft. The simplicity of the diction (i.e. slang terms like "yeah" and allusions to a make-up company "bare essentials") help enhance the complexity of the subject matter. I particularly liked that you ended the draft with the unanswerable and unavoidable question, "I wonder who told her how to be?" It is a common question that I am sure every woman has asked or will ask; however, the specificity you used keeps the draft fresh.
The move you've made to the two-line stanzas is an excellent step, Trista! I'm not quite sure what it is that the speaker despises, though. What's the target of her displeasure? The shift which occurs between the matte lips and experimenting with her partner is a little sudden, though. I'd keep it, because it tells a great deal about the speaker, but I do wonder if perhaps it could be placed elsewhere or reframed. The return you make with the bath works well.
This is an excellent draft, it occurs to me that the question "I wonder what the first woman was like before other women came along" although and excellent ending, might also be an excellent beginning or even triggering title. If you started with this idea it lends itself to a completely different draft. What does this speaker or another speaker think about if they started with the first woman as there subject? And who would that first woman be? This also makes me ponder? What if that first woman were to come before the first man, as in traditional judo-christian ideology? what would that speaker have to say?
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