She Walks in Beauty: A Woman's Journey Through Poems (11 page)

DEBORAH GARRISON

Again.

Midtown is blasted out and silent,

drained of the crowd and its doggy day.

I trample the scraps of deli lunches

some ate outdoors as they stared dumbly

or hooted at us career girls—the haggard

beauties, the vivid can-dos, open raincoats aflap

in the March wind as we crossed to and fro

in front of the Public Library.

Never thought you'd be one of them,

did you, little lady?

Little Miss Phi Beta Kappa,

with your closetful of pleated

skirts, twenty-nine till death do us

part! Don't you see?

The good schoolgirl turns thirty,

forty, singing the song of time management

all day long, lugging the briefcase

home. So at 10:00 PM

you're standing here

with your hand in the air,

cold but too stubborn to reach

into your pocket for a glove, cursing

the freezing rain as though it were

your difficulty. It's pathetic,

and nobody's fault but

your own. Now

the tears,

down into the collar.

Cabs, cabs, but none for hire.

I haven't had dinner; I'm not half

of what I meant to be.

Among other things, the mother

of three. Too tired, tonight,

to seduce the father.

ALANE ROLLINGS

You've seen the skirts go up and down

In bread lines, soup lines, cheese lines, shanty towns.

No one can say you aren't seeking work.

The answers come by mail at noon: No interview.

The best companies never respond; you respect them.

Some days, you don't bother to open the letters,

Just tear them to bits and go out for a walk.

It's a small fraud by the world's standard:

You can't do things like ask for directions,

So you call yourself an adventure-collector.

Failure's a field with real opportunities

For a girl with a pile of business magazines

Which she will probably have to burn for heat.

Your luck will get either worse or better.

The world is none of your business;

It doesn't give you a living.

Someone calls your bluff, asks for references.

You read up on yourself in the library.

With lies, you can double your existence.

In an endless dream of introductory letters,

The applicants sit in all their best clothes,

Their ages against them, their loneliness

Repeated many times. The managers walk around, choosing.

You say you've done singing telegrams and balloon bouquets

(you've done strip-o-grams, sold flowers at traffic lights).

You're a cake decorator, you've been to zoo school

(you're a weeper-at-weddings, you eat cat food).

Welcome to the world of captivity.

You were calm yesterday, and today you're thinking,

“In the days when I was calm.” You'd like

To talk about your sex life. Singing your salesman's song,

You wave your thirteen letters “To Whom It May Concern,”

Every one a masterpiece.

Fooling a man is a full-time job.

You've had a good day? You've found something?

The world needs you right away.

The loneliness repeats itself.

You chart the progress of your fellow novices

Who stand around as astonished as slaves

Delivered in a day. They aren't moving up,

But they're saying “You bet.”

They call the boss The Enemy.

Whatever makes every beginning a sad one

Suggests that somewhere there is something else for you.

Your boss is a terrorist; you like him.

Reading the impressions on his note pad,

You can't help certain hopes.

Sitting in the switchboard glow,

Connected by the movements of your hands and arms,

You're a shaky presence among solid things.

You don't get a glimpse of his heart of gold,

But you hear things he'd never tell anyone:

He spent his youth dreaming of being a thief;

He is where others ought to be;

People should be ashamed of their luck and proud of their trouble.

At noon you sneak out and eat a stale moon pie

From a filling-station jar. You take gloves to the tramps

Who stand around trash-can fires thanking God

They aren't tramps. You shake their hands.

The job is impossible, but the enemy,

Meaning your heart, is calm.

That typewriter has not got his eyes or arms:

If you accept its offer, it won't embrace you, yet it offers

Itself more than he does. It won't mind

If you fall asleep in a rush at your desk

Repeating to yourself, “I am asleep,” or that

you can't tell in this atmosphere

The difference between sweat and tears.

You know what all the world knows: time was invented

So workdays could come to a close.

The women on the electric train

Shift their weight in the direction of the men.

The men stare off, every one for himself,

Every departure a sad one.

You're not the same person they regarded impatiently

Over the pencil sharpener: you've escaped.

You have to lean against the window frame and laugh.

Cherishing bits of evidence of how strange you are,

You pass through glowing rectangles of town and country.

You think of knights, town criers, jesters.

You can see the world in the last light

Laid out like a checkerboard, and you can live.

So you're an agent, adjuster, accommodator

With a wish to take the movements of your arms elsewhere.

Have faith in your doubts.

Your vocation is to feel

Less despair about despair.

You'll be there until you leave.

G. Y. BAXTER

Some would say I chose work

They don't know—it may have chosen me

I'm a working mother

A woman named Sally

Takes care of my baby

Tiny and confused

I can't stay to help

Happy, in fragments

Fleeting, stolen leisure . . .

That time we all paused

To celebrate

A broken BlackBerry

And hectic mornings

And sick days

And school plays

And school's out

And staying late

Running

Running between two worlds

Passing

Passing years

Tears enough to drown me

But I swim

Because mommy must be strong

To live the lesson

I chose to teach her

How to define herself

And she

Letting slide

The forgotten holiday concert

The endless conference call

She is already strong

First with elaborate drawings

in bright markers

Determined, she scribbles

She is proud of me

Then one day

The greeting-card moment

She wants to be just like her mother

And I wonder

Who wouldn't choose that?

MARGE PIERCY

All over America women are burning dinners.

It's lambchops in Peoria; it's haddock

in Providence; it's steak in Chicago

tofu delight in Big Sur; red

rice and beans in Dallas.

All over America women are burning

food they're supposed to bring with calico

smile on platters glittering like wax.

Anger sputters in her brainpan, confined

but spewing out missiles of hot fat.

Carbonized despair presses like a clinker

from a barbecue against the back of her eyes.

If she wants to grill anything, it's

her husband spitted over a slow fire.

If she wants to serve him anything

it's a dead rat with a bomb in its belly

ticking like the heart of an insomniac.

Her life is cooked and digested,

nothing but leftovers in Tupperware.

Look, she says, once I was roast duck

on your platter with parsley but now I am Spam.

Burning dinner is not incompetence but war.

FOLK SONG

There was an old man who lived in the wood

As you can plainly see,

Who said he could do more work in one day

Than his wife could do in three.

“If this be true,” the old woman said,

“Why, this you must allow:

You must do my work for one day

While I go drive the plow.

“And you must milk the Tiny cow

For fear she will go dry,

And you must feed the little pigs

That are within the sty.

“And you must watch the speckled hen

Lest she should lay astray,

And you must wind the reel of yarn

That I spun yesterday.”

The old woman took the staff in her hand

And went to drive the plow,

The old man took the pail in his hand

And went to milk the cow.

But Tiny hitched and Tiny flitched,

And Tiny cocked her nose,

And Tiny gave the old man such a kick

That the blood ran down to his hose.

It's “Hey, my good cow!” and “Ho, my good cow!”

And, “Now, my good cow, stand still!

If ever I milk this cow again,

'Twill be against my will.”

But Tiny hitched and Tiny flitched,

And Tiny cocked her nose,

And Tiny gave the old man such a kick

That the blood ran down to his hose.

And when he had milked the Tiny cow

For fear she would go dry,

Why then he fed the little pigs

That are within the sty.

And then he watched the speckled hen

Lest she should lay astray,

But he forgot the reel of yarn

His wife spun yesterday.

He swore by all the stars in the sky

And all the leaves on the tree

His wife could do more work in one day

Than he could do in three.

He swore by all the leaves on the tree

And all the stars in heaven

That his wife could do more work in one day

Than he could do in seven.

ANONYMOUS
(Said to have been once found in Bushey Churchyard, Hertfordshire)

Here lies a poor woman who always was tired,

For she lived in a place where help wasn't hired,

Her last words on earth were, “Dear friends, I am going,

Where washing ain't done nor cooking nor sewing,

And everything there is exact to my wishes,

For there they don't eat, there's no washing of dishes,

I'll be where loud anthems will always be ringing

(But having no voice, I'll be out of the singing).

Don't mourn for me now, don't grieve for me never,

For I'm going to do nothing for ever and ever.”

M
Y GRANDMOTHERS
were the most correct and elegant women I have ever known. They always wore lipstick and perfume, they carried a handbag, even around the house, and they always dressed for dinner. Although they never broke a sweat, they were also athletic and adventurous. They were both coquettes.

My mother became famous for creating her own style, but she learned a lot from her mother. She admired her mother's sense of self-discipline and understatement, but ever since they fought about her wedding dress, she steered my grandmother's critical comments away from her appearance, and toward the length of my brother's hair, the social deterioration of fashion in general, and my summer wardrobe in particular.

On my father's side, none of my aunts took after their fashionable mother—they preferred to dress like their brothers. So my grandmother took an interest in what her granddaughters were wearing instead. She loved dressing up in the same Lilly Pulitzer shift as my cousin Kathleen, and she always told us how important it was to keep your figure no matter how many children you had. She was proud that she had worn the same dress to meet the King of England in 1939 and to my father's Inaugural Ball in 1960. She taught us to stand sideways with our elbows out when we were being photographed, so as to show off our waists. She had her work cut out for her, as we spent most of our time in her kitchen, making fudge and eating her special sugar cookies, resulting in waists that no angled elbows could hide.

Grandma was always happy to see us, and told us how pretty we looked—except once. My cousin Maria and I went shopping one afternoon when we were visiting her in Florida. Maria convinced me that I looked incredibly glamorous in a hospital-green linen bomber jacket with puffy sleeves. I was excited about my new and daring look—until Grandma saw it. She had an unmatched ability to cut to the heart of the matter in the nicest possible way. Her reaction to the green fiasco was “That's lovely, dear. But in my day, we tried to buy things that suited us.”

Those words echo through my mind whenever I stand in front of a mirror unsure if I am looking at the New Me or just a wildly unflattering experiment. As girls and young women, we all go through many phases, depending on how we feel about ourselves and our bodies. We try to dress like people we admire, the most popular girls in the class, or celebrities of the moment. It takes time to figure out our own conception of beauty—both outer and inner, and often we return to the images of beauty that we formed in our youth, transformed through our lifetime of experience. Thinking about my grandmothers now, I understand that it was their faith, bravery, curiosity, and humor, as well as their fashionable hats, that made them beautiful.

I thought this book should include poems that explore women's complicated relationship with beauty, and our attachments to objects that help us feel and look more attractive. The way we present ourselves to the world, our changing sense of self, the pleasure of feeling pretty, the pain of feeling self-conscious, and the freedom that comes with accepting yourself are all important parts of being a woman.

Shakespeare's description of Cleopatra is one of the most extravagant in all of literature. He makes an explicit connection between beauty and power, describing the elaborate pageantry of Cleopatra's golden barge, her breathtaking loveliness, and the royal authority of her seductive voice. At a time when kings and pharaohs were believed to have divine attributes, and women were powerless and almost nonexistent in the historical record, Cleopatra was truly a wonder of the world.

In contrast, Ralph Waldo Emerson's poem “The Rhodora” contains the observation, “Beauty is its own excuse for being.” Writing about a flower hidden in the woods, Emerson ponders the mystery of nature and the existence of effortless beauty. Other poems examine the efforts women go to in order to be beautiful. In “What Do Women Want?” and “Cosmetics Do No Good,” the poets describe the irresistible appeal of clothes and makeup.

One of the most surprising poems is “Face Lift” by Sylvia Plath. Written in 1961, well before the explosion of cosmetic surgery, the poem describes the clinical aspects of the procedure. The level of detail is similar to poems in which Plath describes her own shock treatments and hospitalization for mental illness. Interestingly, in the poem she evokes Cleopatra lying naked on her barge, as the patient is wheeled down the hospital corridor into the operating room.

In “The Catch” by Richard Wilbur and “Delight in Disorder” by Robert Herrick, male poets writing three hundred years apart describe the impact of what women wear. Richard Wilbur describes how mystified he feels watching a woman try on a new dress in the mirror. And in “Patterns,” Amy Lowell explores the ways in which women rely on clothes to distract us from events we cannot control.

The last word belongs to Marianne Moore, whose complicated poem “Roses Only” ends with the memorable line, “your thorns are the best part of you.”