her back

HOW SIMILE WORKS

The drizzle-slicked cobblestone alleys
of some city;
and the brickwork back
of the lumbering Galapagos tortoise
they'd set me astride, at the "petting zoo"....

The taste of our squabble still in my mouth
the next day;
and the brackish puddles sectioning
the street one morning after a storm....

So poetry configures its comparisons.

My wife and I have been arguing; now
I'm telling her a childhood remini- scence,
stroking her back, her naked back that was
the particles in the heart of a star and will be
again, and is hers, and is like nothing
else, and is like the components of everything.

Albert Goldbarth

from To Be Read in 500 Years by Albert Goldbarth.
Copyright © 2009 by Albert Goldbarth.
All rights reserved.

mew

there's so much to say about today's selection of images, but i won't say it all because to tell you the truth i am simply not interested in who patented what technique and who showed what when. i shall remind you, though, that what all of these artists were doing at that moment of time was nothing short of revolutionary in that they were breaking free of the academy's formal classicism. though each has his own distinctive style, they are clearly friends and brothers, and students of the new japonisme that facilitated that break.

crossword

a woman moves through dog rose and juniper bushes,
a pussy clean and folded

between her legs,
breasts like the tips of her festive shoes
shine silently in her heavy armoire.

one blackbird, one cow,
one horse.
the sea beats against the wall of the waterless.
she walks to a phone booth
that waits
a fair distance from all three villages.

it’s a game she could have heard on the radio:
a question, a number,
an answer, a prize.
her pussy reaches up and turns on the light in her womb.

from the rain,
she says into the receiver,
we compiled white tables and chairs under a shed
into a crossword puzzle
and sat ourselves in the grid.

the receiver is silent.
the bird flounces
like a burglar caught red-handed.
her voice stumbles
over her glands.
the body to be written

in the last block—
i can suck his name
out of any letter.

all three villages cover their faces with wind.

Valzhyna Mort

Source: Poetry (December 2009)

or maybe "ain't i a woman"?

(i can't exactly say why i would want to put the lyrics to such an awful song here on my blog, except for the fact that when i look at these pictures, i keep hearing this song.)


SHE'S A LADY

Well she's all you'd ever want
She's the kind they'd like to flaunt and take to dinner
Well she always knows her place
She's got style, she's got grace, she's a winner.

She's a Lady. Whoa whoa whoa, she's a Lady
Talkin' about that little Lady, and the Lady is mine.

Well she's never in the way
Something always nice to say, Oh what a blessing.
I can leave her on her own
Knowing she's okay alone, and there's no messing.

She's a Lady. Whoa whoa whoa, she's a Lady
Talkin' about that little Lady, and the Lady is mine.

Well she never asks for very much and I don't refuse her
Always treat her with respect, I never would abuse her.
What she's got is hard to find, and I don't want to lose her.
Help me build a mansion from my little pile of clay. Hey, hey, hey






Well she knows what I'm about,
She can take what I dish out, and that's not easy.
Well she knows me through and through,
She knows just what to do, and how to please me.

She's a Lady. Whoa whoa whoa, she's a Lady
Talkin' about that little Lady, and the Lady is mine.

Yeah yeah yeah, She's a Lady
Listen to me baby, She's a Lady
Whoa whoa whoa, She's a Lady
And the Lady is mine

Yeah yeah yeah, She's a Lady
Talkin' about this little Lady
Whoa whoa whoa whoa
And the Lady is mine

Yeah yeah, She's a Lady
And the Lady is mine.

sung by Tom Jones