Women's Work

[JamesG]

Love this poem I would have to say, a fabulous evocation of everyday misogyny and the strength needed to get through it. Just a few thoughts that may or may not be appreciated.

This refuge along Parkway
where one returns after
emptying Fridays pay-
just to loosen lips,
and feet,
smells like
mother's macaroni,
cool grease,
stumbling nights,
and strolling days.

Here I,
in an apron that long since
failed to contain my
growing hips, Love the connection between hips and lips in the first stanza
sway between
plywood corridors,
speckled with imitation Not sure what this means?
silver and porcelain.

As I bent to bus
a four-top I'd
picked up
from the ewe-eyed auburn,
slowly,
then all
at once
the rough inseam
broke
in a small deluge
of soft flesh. I love this passage, in particular these last two lines, though I feel its staccato nature is a little forced perhaps. 

Manager Benji was a real
gold chain chest
hair kind of a man.
Stomach back crotch Not sure about this line as I am not sure of what it means
forward kind of a man.
tear the tears from you
with his teeth kind of a man:
A man who fancied
himself a Man. A brilliant description of a type of man we all know

As he shook the house
he spittled into me
the spangled truth;
we own this space.
What a terrible excess
of mulled Blood in his Dick, I don't think these need to be capitalized really.
to address us,
as such,
in our own kingdom.
so I took my exposed
boyshorts,
regal in their way,
and I sauntered out with dignity
alone intact.

In my car,
I began
to put the rest of
myself 
back together. A great ending