Femme as Weapon

(revison)

Picture a scene:
Two young women prepare to go out for an evening.
One sharpens her lips with the blood red whetstone of her lipstick
The other restraining straps of her black sandal armor.
The mirror watches the way one whips a scarf over her shoulder and bats her eyelashes
Like a master of a blade practicing drills before battle.
One lays out four pairs of earrings on the table, weighing each with merrits, deliberately and methodically, the other weighing in over her her shoulder, in between styles of scarf tying.
The scarf tied, the hair is next to move, one of the most vital allies in the night to come.
Out come a turtle shell clip, a hair tie, and an armada of bobby pins,
All ready and willing to assist the hair with a complicated up-do maneuver.
The women pray to the goddess of war, Aphrodite, with their rouged lips and their
Glittery eyelashes. They pray for victory.

Body series 4:

My back
Is the American midwest
Broad, smooth and featureless
You can get on the road at the base of my skull and see my spine,
The gentle curve of it reaching all the way down to my tailbone
Three days drive from here, and still nothing but silky corn and soybeans.

Body Series 3:

My biceps
Are curved wire
Studded plate mail
Chain mail wrapped around aluminium alloy bone.
I have titanium shoulders and copper triceps.
Heavy metals in my thighs and stone around my ankles.

Last Saturday I saw a red-tailed hawk in the sky
wings spread, floating upwards.
I knew my steel biceps would never float that light.

Body series 2:

My hands

Are as rough as the bark of the vines I pulled from the trees and bushes.

Oriental bittersweet, smothering trees and stifling the forest.

Hundreds and hundreds of pounds pulling the enormous cottonwoods and oaks to the ground.

Mighty giants, deep grooved bark and roots blanketed with leaves of years past,

Brought slowly and painfully down to the earth.

Body series 1:

My feet

Are as cracked and uneven as the dirt road I walked down at sunrise

One day in early June. That morning

The gravel rose up to meet my skin as the sun rose up to meet the day

The chilled morning air whisped, hello, to my skin through my thin t-shirt

And I wondered for a second if I am the only living human left on this empty planet

The grass nods along as I wonder, and the trees warm their thick green leaves

Against the cold morning, rubbing them together for meager warmth.

Bloodlust:

My eyes linger on his neck, only he’s

Looking away. To hold his jugular

In my teeth, to rake fingernails and tear

Tender flesh--pain, not as punishment but

As a declaration of sweet freedom.

If pleasure is my birthright, if pleasure

Has been denied of me so long, I will

Reclaim it with lipstick, claws and high heels.

I think the word for this feeling is bloodlust.

In the days before the end of the world

In the days before the end of the world, I enjoyed myself quite a bit. Even at that time, I had this idea, this inkling that the world was ending and instead of upsetting me, I think it acted rather as a fire under my ass. It was upsetting, of course, the environmental disasters, the war, the famine, and the death. But it all seemed rather distant. The worst part was that my grandparents in Florida were closer to the end of the world than me, and I did worry about them. But I had enough to eat every day and a house with four walls to live in and that was really all I thought I needed. I worked a lot, but I felt that work gave my life meaning. I had good food and good sex in large quantities and the autumn before the end of the world was warm and sunny, a light hearted mockery of the climate change to come. I found myself doing things like buying new dancing shoes, or booking tickets for a concert in February. I made plans to meet a friend in New York City over winter break, although we both knew full well the likelihood of either of us, let alone both of us, making it to the spring was slim at best. In the days before the end of the world, I called a partner, nearly frenzied. "The world is ending." I told him, "We can't just sit around and do nothing." I cried to him for a while, and then we got off topic and talked and laughed and I went and made dinner. As if I couldn't tell you that it was the end of the world.