Overheard at dinner:
"When reading Merrill, you just have to suspend your heterotextuality."
"You are right there in the liminal zone."
* * *
Tomorrow: sonnets on parade. A wee sampling:
From the inimitable Kathrine Varnes:
The Fleshpot Sonnets (a crown)
1.
This moment's peach — sometimes it's just enough
sweetness, despite the stone and bitter skin
or because of both, because. Because the thin
juices won't behave: soaking the white cuff
edges, filling, spilling from the palm's trough,
flesh of water, sugar gracing the chin,
tracing the neck like a contemplation of sin
we can wash away. We don't even have to bluff.
So what will I steal tonight as the toddler sleeps?
A husband lingers in the hallway's dark
and glances, settles his eye where he'd recruit,
I with the monitor's glow upon my cheeks
two hours a day. Leave now? I can't debark
while writing towards this bivalved, cleft-fleshed fruit.
* * *
7.
I gave up padded bras, certain offense.
I shunned the curve of underwire glam.
Let me be the woman that I am,
I said. Let infants find their milk, the tense
cry of hunger loosen. Impotence
inspired by well-fed babies? Sham.
Shame. Before the press of the mammogram,
let breasts be breasts, whatever audience.
Let breasts be breasts. Our season's brief as is.
It's hard enough to find a bra that fits.
(And those who asked the schoolyard, Does she stuff?
now look askance–filled with J. Alfred's fear
a thousand times repeating: Do I dare?)
Declare this moment and this peace enough.
(With the permission of Kathrine Varnes. From Hot Sonnets, Entasis Press, 2011)
Pretty yummy, isn't it?