from the book Before It's Light chapter: Red Velvet G-Strings And Apricot Sighs
(mad girls, Marilyn, Lorena, Jesus, and Jackie)
The Mad Girl Feels She Could Have Been
Or Maybe Was The Girl Who Slept With All
The Rock Stars, Wrote A Book About It
sure they’d need her more
than those 3 minutes. “I didn’t,”
she says, “at first go all the
way. I was from Minneapolis,
but by the sixties everybody
did. My ass in the air like a
mound of flowers wiggling.
I was in love each time my
legs split, didn’t feel used but
like soap that would be just
a cold plain white bar with-
out the fingers digging in,
rubbing me into where I
melted like Ivory suds,
didn’t bitch, saw a house
of little rock singers, saw
us old, in front of a fire
remembering the old days
when I went down on all 40
of them, thought each cock
was the last one I’d ever
grow out of me. I thought
my lips, there and there, were
a slit you’d lock into as if
there was no other world”
The Mad Girl Is About To Throw Out
Frederick’s Of Hollywood’s Catalogue
when a page catches her eye: a panty to pull in
the waist and puff out the fanny so it looks like
someone you’d have to touch. Most of the
things on this page pull something in and
shove it somewhere else, stick tits up toward
the sun, cram a waist into itself like a punishment
or a way to keep what’s inside so far inside
the one imprisoned could not speak out. Girdles,
cinchers, spandex to maximize and minimize.
Latex to make thighs look longer or rounder, firmer---
pads that have pink nipples in them that warm
to your body temperature to blend naturally but
won’t, it says, “smoosh” your bust. The mad girl
thinks how much simpler to go around in baggy sweats
like she’s sure Marilyn Monroe and Brigitte B must
have longed to, decked out in torturous clothes.
Man-made, not surprisingly, in Germany, twisted to be
what they aren’t, be un-real as a Barbie, squeezed
and teased like hair and even dreams and wishes
and the mad girl decides she’ll flow, let her own
shape determine where she’s going like a river
that makes its own bed
The Mad Girl Wraps The Porn Book In A Jacket
About Steak On The Subway
She has to read about the bulging
cocks tearing thru zippers for a
course, even reads cock as cook,
reads nipple as nibble as she feels
the eyes of strangers as women
on subways on the page unzip and
drop or raise whatever keeps them
from merging so someone whose
face they can’t even see can, with
one lick of spit, enter from behind.
Steak like fuck she reads is from an
old Saxon word, steik, stick it.
Thick pointed sticks dipping in the
fire. She feels her thighs burn,
wonders about the tongue of the
British king called “Sir Loin: and
if he licked his platters. Inside,
spread wildly open on the page, a
construction worker watches a
woman’s hand disappear up inside
her hairy lips after she’s been out
looking for her lost kitty which he
happens to find just as she’s about
to come and brings even more back
to her. Do you like yours juicy,
dripping or charred? The meat book
asks, rose and pink flesh on the back
so red they color the air. To taste this
done-ness, make a small slit close
to the bone, examine the color.
Pain and pleasure are entwined the
erotica book’s introduction says
like fat marbling muscle and meat
or thighs and tongues of fat ladies
when the plumber goes down under
the table during a luncheon talk, eats
his way up past her ankles. Steak’s
a convenience food like a pair of tongues
you just need something to apply a
sauce or marinade. If things get too hot
you can always use a toy water pistol.
If there’s too much tail, you’ll have to
grind it or tie it. Whatever, it’s best
to dive in and eat when it’s hot
from my book:
Before It's Light - Lyn Lifshin
$16.00 (1-57423-114-6/paper)
$27.50 (1-57423-115-4/cloth trade)
$35.00 (1-57423-116-2/signed cloth)
Black Sparrow Press
