Day 5: 30 Days of Pussy & Poetry

From Deborah Poe's ,,clitoris,, ,,vulva,, ,,penis,,:

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SYLLABICATION: clit·o·ris

There should be a book like cunt called clit. And it’s all about orgasm, isn’t it. And know that bling is this. Revision: “An NO2 high- to the 9nth degree.” Such as, Vienna variants and inclines. A decline to recline. There is a Gustav Klimt painting.  The kiss of the clitoris. It would be so beautiful save the deformed bodies, not long enough, not long enough. This clitoris longs enough for you. This clitoris is a packsaddle that leans and bends. This clitoris is a suffixed form, a small erectile organ sloped towards you.

Cover by: Sarah Elizabeth Kirby

Deborah Poe's chapbook revolves around the syllabics, definition and etymology of these three words: clitoris, penis, and vulva. The "penis" becomes grouped with the "clitoris" and the "vulva" in this poem. When we arrive there, Poe tells us: "To talk about a neighboring penis that whips its pussy into shape. Because a vulva deserves, mind you. And a landlord should listen who has never seen a head on car crash. A landlord is a penis. The penis stands revised. The penis stands erect. "  The penis in this chapbook is revised and reprised, and yet here we are again with the same technical terms for it in its "erectness,"  in its lording over the land as it were. 

In the poem "Serial Vulva," Poe writes: "At night, there is a blanket, a covering of you. Whether or not you know it, I take a ride with you. What is this ride? Is it like a roller coaster or more, a ferris wheel. It depends on the moment. It depends on the social mores."

Poe breaks down each word into the syllabics reminding us that it is on the tongue, on the way words leave our mouths that we begin to form our understanding. From there, we seek the historical meaning as no word exists in a vacuum; it is our need to define that helps us place a word into context. From there we scroll through all of the allusions and associations that each particular word has for us. Each word in the human language resonates particular for each person. Here Poe takes three words that are simply part of our anatomy, but which also in our culture carry a heavy weight. In some ways, a weight much heavier than what can be located in the simple definition. There in the poem, Poe begins to unravel how we associate and dissociate from a word. We always come to the poem with our expectations, and Poe swerves from where we might imagine we would go in each case. There is a deliberate rupture, an off balance caused by sudden swings into consciousness. It mimics the trickiness of trying to say anything about a loaded word like "vulva" or "penis." Where does one begin or end. 

Poe captures us: "And again, the vulvas all laugh. They are like the wind that laughs at a farmhouse refusing the farmer and his wife." 

     

NAPUSWRIMO: Day 4 of 30 Days of Pussy & Poetry

OKCupid, an online dating site, provides questions to match potential mates. 

Have you ever tasted your own sexual fluids?

severing these plays, these fiery gaits

oh echoing madly, then etching wide as

or long as, this body of green sea

aswirl, a masking you could cooperate

blinding conducive or confirmed a losing

he’s a simple anagram of forward/ backward

timing & only you could make it more complicated

let go to the point of possible

a reminder of endly the same, you just

put it to bed another & then again

hold on to the reflection of the reflection 

If your 9 year old daughter was begging you to wear a thong, what would your response be?

remember when playing back the way an echo loops 

so that each cheek blossoms when you rush

into longing that seems like it would be adult

but then you simply never

once the way to learn anything was a gaggle

girls in their undersea anemones

all arms a type of poisoning to those not

initiated to the rub: you lied about the blood

you had and the blood you didn't 

the first time you come 

there is repulsion tinged with wonder

sex is no different; it's the way out of this

and into another

NAPUSWRIMO: Day 3 of Pussy & Poetry "The Perfect Vagina"

Specifics: A Coding

the infinite return from exactness

what in a language is deformed

[vagina (from Latin vāgīna, literally "sheath" or "scabbard") is a fibromuscular elastic tubular tract which is a sex organ and has two main functions: sexual intercourse and childbirth. In humans, this passage leads from the opening of the vulva to the uterus (womb), but the vaginal tract ends at the cervix. Unlike men, who have only one genital orifice, women have two, the urethra and the vagina. The vaginal opening is much larger than the urethral opening, and both openings are protected by the labia.^[1][2] The inner mould of the vagina has a foldy texture which can create friction for the penis during intercourse. During arousal, the vagina gets moist to facilitate the entrance of the penis.

The Latinate plural "vaginae" is rarely used in English. Colloquially, the word vagina is often used to refer to the vulva or to the female genitals in general.^[3]However, by its dictionary and anatomical definitions, vagina refers exclusively to the specific internal structure.]

:: ssshhhhhh ::

[The Great Wall of Vagina (artist Jamie McCartney) ]

Apparently, the excuse is that specificity in citing particulars is not necessary.

A naming of a naming is an excuse.

As much as I want to say: look at this.
There is no way of looking for me
that can look away from the body
of a man who puts his hands on a woman's
body in order to show her
her body// do you under/ stand
the imprint of the gaze
and under what duress you make
a thing called art
a telling of what I'm seeing
but told wrong
from the exact definition

you get to rename
again



Dear Travelers in the Landscape of Perfection:
Dear Mothers in the Lost Desert of Mouths:
Dear Sisters who Labor Under False Impressions:
Dear Girl who Sewed the Flower Tattoo:
Dear Monster who Crept This Shadow Into:
Dear Hand over Hand that Waded:
Dear Good-Byes to Mirroring:
Dear Frightening:
Dearest: 

NAPUSWRIMO: 30 Days of Pussy & Poetry

"Novices succumb completely to their wide-eyed appetite for erection, violent penetration, repeated blows & injures." -Luce Irigaray,

What is your idea of heaven?

a scenography of step by step convincing

can't make a coherent hole from a whole

already handed to you: I want the flesh bit

back on these forensics

tell me how you pray: homage to a bottomed lip

language crazy hard, a vast licking till you

envelope // oh, anxious clench

take these everyday drugs, take the finger

offered inside of you     blessed    blessed

you consecrate, blue-veiled a lovely mothering

of holy shoals: she ribbons, she jewels

crusty tubbed god-head ashy in the doming

ashy in the knock-knock: this type of date

requires an exoskeleton, in this lifetime

once upon this idling

Mimosa Pale’s vulva on a bike, which she calls the ‘Mobile Female Monument’.

Blog Post specific to vulvas and bike riding.

Yonijas and Inanna: A Project to talk Vulvas for 30 Days

From The Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets ed by Barbara G. Walker:

A Hindu myth of the battle of the sexes told of a quarrel between the goddess Parvati (Kali) and the God Mahadeva (Shiva) over their rival claims to the true parenthood of human beings. To decide the question, each proposed to create a race of people without the aid of the other. The God, spirit of the lingam or phallus, created the Lingajas, who were weak and stupid, "dull of intellect, their bodies feeble, their limbs distorted."
However, the Goddess created the Yonijas, spirits of the Yoni or Vulva, who turned out to be excellent specimens: "well-shaped, with sweet aspects and fine complexions." The two races fought a war and the Yonijas won. (1098)

From Inanna Lady of the Largest Heart, Poems of the Sumerian High Priestess Enheduanna by Betty De Shong Meador:

British Anthropologist Chris Knight presents a convincing case for the relationship of women's synchronized bleeding and the "leap" to symbolic culture in the Paleolithic Period..."(Ovarian synchrony) provides the key to an understanding of symbolic culture...Speaking of Aboriginal cultures he says, "The myths allege that ritual power originally belonged to women." (140)

From the "Courtship of Inanna and Dumuzi" (from Inanna Queen of Heaven and Earth, Her Stories and Hymns from Sumer, ed by Diane Wolkstein and Samuel Noah Kramer

Inanna spoke:
What I tell you
Let the weaver sing into song.
What I tell you,
Let it flow from ear to mouth,
Let it pass from old to young:

My vulva, the horn
The  Boat of Heaven,
Is full of eagerness like the young moon.
My untilled land lies fallow

As for me, Inanna,
Who will plow my vulva?
Who will plow my high field?
Who will plow my wet ground?

As for me, the young woman,
Who will plow my vulva?
Who will station the ox there?
Who will plow my vulva?




From Sumerian tablets dating back to 2000 B.C. to the oldest poet who wrote of the cycles & moods of Inanna: poems, prayers, songs, myths, & art dedicate themselves to the feminine mystery, the yoni spirit, the incantation to the vulva.

But who are the modern Yonijas? Are they singing praise or indulging in yoniphobic traditions paved by patriarchy? How are modern poems to the vulva being sung and what is the language? What is the encoding we enact to sing these songs in a world where vulvas are commodities? where they are traded and owned and where yoni spirits have been caged and bartered?

Where do we see the words: "Plow my vulva" today and in what context? How has the sacred hymn been reclaimed and perverted for another's gaze? How are pussies perceived, branded, marketed? If the pussy is political, isn't it also commercial? Isn't it also economy/ capitalism/ finance/ power/ control/ subversion? Is there a war on Vulvas? Or are we just waking up to a world that has relegated the vulva to less than nothing? Because no one has a war with something or someone that has no power, do they?

And of its cycles and moons, how have we forgotten the power of these changes and condemned our bleeding vaginas to shameful backgrounds, to commercial products to erase the reality, to a shying away from fluid that is not sexual and therefore has no titillating power for man? How have we accepted this version of the myth? Have iPeriod apps taken the place of menstrual huts where women could retreat from the world and meditate on their power? Have bleached vagina plugs (tampons) really signaled a freedom for women so their "bleeding" won't get in the way of their busy lives (mothering and working) ?

For 30 days, I'm going to talk about vulvas. I'm going to write about vulvas and talk about poems about vulvas and art about vulvas and dispiriting or discouraging practices around vulvas.

Because I believe as Luce Irigaray says: "If we keep on speaking the same language together, we're going to reproduce the same history."

Because speaking about vulvas is historic, it links to a past where our earliest myths and songs take shape; and because poets and writers do tread in the space of new language, I want to  spend some time unearthing what they are doing with words.

And I love vulvas. They are beautiful and functional and amazing. And in a perfect world, everyone would carry that in their heart and practice that with their actions.