That’s the title and the title poem of my second book of poetry, on which I have just put the finishing touches and which I will, over the next couple weeks, start shopping around to publishers. LIke last time–which was in 2004, the year my first book, The Silence of Men, was accepted for publication, though it was actually published in 2006–I have decided that I will not be submitting this manuscript to any contests. Well, maybe one or two, because the prize money is enough to make it worth gambling the entry fee, but what I’m really looking for is a publisher with whom I can develop a relationship, because I know I have more books of poetry in me. If I cannot find a publisher for this manuscript, I will almost certainly publish it myself, because I believe the poems in it deserve a hearing.
Edited to add: For me, the book’s title, Because Men Only Understand Cliches, is so firmly rooted in the circumstances that inform the title poem, and also in the poem’s–and therefore the book’s–position (in my head) as a response to that assertion, that it did not occur to me that some people might read the title as an accusation that I was making against men. Well, I have been shown the error of my ways. Artos, who commented on my blog, wonders whether or not I “realize how offensive [Because Men Only Understand Cliches] is to men who are not manginas? Kind of like, “Blacks only know fried chicken and watermelon.” I have decided to let his comment through primarily because it made me smile; it’s the first time I’ve been called a mangina on the Internet, certainly on my own blog, and that feels like some kind milestone. When I told my son about Artos’ comment, he said, after he stopped snorting with laughter, “Really, what is he, in fifth grade?” This is from the first movement of “Because Men Only Understand Cliches,” which tells the story of where the title comes from:
Belly like a watermelon
stuffed up the front
of her white cotton summer dress,
the pregnant woman at the corner
turns her back to me to face
the direction she’ll cross the street in,
and what she’s wearing
flares from the waist down
in a twirl that settles
along the line of her hips
till only the hem that falls
to just above her ankles
is still rippling, a flag
waving surrender
to this late summer day.My eyes lift to her shoulders,
follow the contour the fabric traces
down from the loops
through which her tanned arms emerge
to the curve of her butt cheeks
that bounce lightly as she steps back,
just avoiding the taxi pulling up fast
to the curb where she’s standing.She’s as tall as me or taller,
black hair tied tight in a braid
pointing like a compass
to the small of her back,
and she isn’t wearing panties,
her dress not unlike the one
you wore the night we wandered the beach
till the boardwalk lights were stars
blinking at our backs,
and the campfires scattered across the sand
were the signal flames of a distant town.The moon over the ocean
cast our shadows behind us.
You stood in front of me,
the blue cloth of what you were wearing
bunched in the hand I held to steady you
just beneath your breasts, my other hand
finding when I reached
that you’d been naked to the breeze
running up your legs, you’d said,
like the water’s warm breath
before it touched its tongue to you.You gave a throaty laugh
as I pulled you tighter to me,
stroking and pulling and gently
parting the fur you let grow in
once the lover who’d kept you shaved was gone;
and you were wet,
though wet does not do justice
to the fruit bursting its skin
between your legs.I kissed the lips you shape your words with,
and in your coming—we were surprised:
you never come at home
at just the urging of my hands—
you called your pleasure out to the open sea
for the wind and tide to carry who-knows-where,
and I heard again my teacher
telling the men in my first-year poetry workshop
that none of us would ever
“write a successful cunt poem,
because when it comes to cunts,
men only understand clichés.”I thought how you have only ever called it
your vagina, then later, while you slept,
tried to list the rhyming words I’d need
to write a sonnet, but China, Carolina, trichina—
a parasite you don’t want to catch—and angina
were the best I could do. I listed off-rhymes,
Montana, banana, and then,
in the New Yawk accent you love to mimic,
I heard linah, finah, minah, and reclinah,
that last one bringing me
the woman from the conference
who worried that two kids had made her
“roomier down there”
than any man other than the husband
she’d been needing to leave for years
would want, and so she hadn’t left him.
Cross-posted on my blog.
