{"id":17146,"date":"2013-04-20T06:00:13","date_gmt":"2013-04-20T13:00:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=17146"},"modified":"2013-04-20T11:59:00","modified_gmt":"2013-04-20T18:59:00","slug":"because-men-only-understand-cliches","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=17146","title":{"rendered":"Because Men Only Understand Cliches"},"content":{"rendered":"

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,\u00a0The Silence of Men<\/a>,<\/em> 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.<\/p>\n

Edited to add:\u00a0For me, the book’s title,\u00a0Because Men Only Understand Cliches,<\/em>\u00a0is 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<\/a>, wonders whether or not I “realize how offensive\u00a0[Because Men Only Understand Cliches]<\/em>\u00a0is to men who are not mang\u00adi\u00adnas? Kind of like, \u201cBlacks 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?”\u00a0<\/strong>This is from the first movement of “Because Men Only Understand Cliches,” which tells the story of where the title comes from:<\/p>\n

Belly like a watermelon
\nstuffed up the front
\nof her white cotton summer dress,
\nthe pregnant woman at the corner
\nturns her back to me to face
\nthe direction she\u2019ll cross the street in,
\nand what she\u2019s wearing
\nflares from the waist down
\nin a twirl that settles
\nalong the line of her hips
\ntill only the hem that falls
\nto just above her ankles
\nis still rippling, a flag
\nwaving surrender
\nto this late summer day.<\/p>\n

My eyes lift to her shoulders,
\nfollow the contour the fabric traces
\ndown from the loops
\nthrough which her tanned arms emerge
\nto the curve of her butt cheeks
\nthat bounce lightly as she steps back,
\njust avoiding the taxi pulling up fast
\nto the curb where she\u2019s standing.<\/p>\n

She\u2019s as tall as me or taller,
\nblack hair tied tight in a braid
\npointing like a compass
\nto the small of her back,
\nand she isn\u2019t wearing panties,
\nher dress not unlike the one
\nyou wore the night we wandered the beach
\ntill the boardwalk lights were stars
\nblinking at our backs,
\nand the campfires scattered across the sand
\nwere the signal flames of a distant town.<\/p>\n

The moon over the ocean
\ncast our shadows behind us.
\nYou stood in front of me,
\nthe blue cloth of what you were wearing
\nbunched in the hand I held to steady you
\njust beneath your breasts, my other hand
\nfinding when I reached
\nthat you\u2019d been naked to the breeze
\nrunning up your legs, you\u2019d said,
\nlike the water\u2019s warm breath
\nbefore it touched its tongue to you.<\/p>\n

You gave a throaty laugh
\nas I pulled you tighter to me,
\nstroking and pulling and gently
\nparting the fur you let grow in
\nonce the lover who\u2019d kept you shaved was gone;
\nand you were wet,
\nthough wet<\/em> does not do justice
\nto the fruit bursting its skin
\nbetween your legs.<\/p>\n

I kissed the lips you shape your words with,
\nand in your coming\u2014we were surprised:
\nyou never come at home
\nat just the urging of my hands\u2014
\nyou called your pleasure out to the open sea
\nfor the wind and tide to carry who-knows-where,
\nand I heard again my teacher
\ntelling the men in my first-year poetry workshop
\nthat none of us would ever
\n\u201cwrite a successful cunt poem,
\nbecause when it comes to cunts,
\nmen only understand clich\u00e9s.\u201d<\/p>\n

I thought how you have only ever called it
\nyour vagina, then later, while you slept,
\ntried to list the rhyming words I\u2019d need
\nto write a sonnet, but China, Carolina, trichina\u2014
\na parasite you don\u2019t want to catch\u2014and angina
\nwere the best I could do. I listed off-rhymes,
\nMontana, banana, and then,
\nin the New Yawk accent you love to mimic,
\nI heard linah, finah, minah, and reclinah,
\nthat last one bringing me
\nthe woman from the conference
\nwho worried that two kids had made her
\n\u201croomier down there\u201d
\nthan any man other than the husband
\nshe\u2019d been needing to leave for years
\nwould want, and so she hadn\u2019t left him.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Cross-posted on my blog<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":49,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[136],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17146","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17146","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/49"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17146"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17146\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17148,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17146\/revisions\/17148"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17146"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17146"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17146"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}