It was so good to see you last night. I always have a great love for you that I’m not sure that I know how to explain. It’s almost like you were mine. When I started babysitting for you when you were 6 months old I felt that bond with you; you were closer to being my sister than you were to yours. I still smile when I think about leaving your house, walking 3 doors down and having your father call me the minute I walked through the door asking me to come back because you wouldn’t eat for him.
I don’t think you could have been more than six or seven the summer when we all sat on my porch and I asked you what time you had to be home—you told me 7 pm and I said that it was really too bad because the fairies that lived under the ivy didn’t come until 7:30. You said to me with all the seriousness that you could muster how much you wished you would be allowed to stay outside to see them. You believed my stories and loved giving you that gift. You were part Irish; you HAD to believe in fairies.
I dream all of the time about being in your house with the secret window for the milk deliveries. Truth be told, my dream house still is an old colonial like yours was. I remember seeing you when I was wearing this nautical inspired white suit one summer and you telling me that you were going to buy one like that when you were out of nursing school. Do you remember how crazy that hospital was? Your mother worked there, my mother worked there, Jimmy’s mother worked there…overtime, time owed…I forgot to tell you last night that Karyn who worked in the pharmacy with you and I recently became back in touch with each other. I wish I could go back in time; it was happier then.
In a blink you were married and had children of your own. But when I look at you and how beautiful you are as a woman, I still see the baby with the blonde curls that turned red; your eyes still smile the same way that they did when you were six months old… but what I didn’t know about you until last night was that you had your father’s voice… and that you still loved listening to my stories.
So since we giggled about it, I’m sharing last night’s story for posterity.
-----
A Hollywood Blonde asked about a poem this way:
Never understood this poem. It's supposedly very good. Any help would be appreciated.
-----
“Chitchat with the Junior League Women”
A Junior League woman in blue
Showed me enough panty
To keep my back straight,
To keep my wine glass lifting
Every three minutes.
Do you have children? she asked.
Oh, yes, I chimed. Sip, sip.
Her legs spread just enough to stir
The lint from my eyelashes,
Just enough to think of a porpoise
Smacking me with sea-scented kisses.
The Junior League woman in yellow
Turned to the writer next to me,
Bearded fellow with two remaindered books,
His words smoldering for any goddamn reader.
This gave me time. Sip, sip,
Then a hard, undeceitful swallow
Of really good Napa Valley wine.
My mind, stung with drink,
Felt tight, like it had panty hose
Over its cranium. I thought
About the sun between delightful sips,
How I once told my older brother,
Pale vampire of psychedelic music,
That I was working on a tan.
That summer my mom thought I had worms
I was thin as a flattened straw,
Nearly invisible, a mere vapor
As I hiked up and down the block.
I rolled out an orange towel in the back yard
And the sun sucked more weight
From my body. After two hours,
My skin hollered… I let the reminiscence
Pass and reached for the bottle,
Delicately because I was in a house
With a hill view held up by cement and lumber.
A Junior League woman in red
Sat with her charming hands
On her lap, studying us two writers,
Now with the panty hose of drunkenness
Pulled over our heads and down to our eyes.
What do you do exactly, Mr. Soto?
And I looked at her blinding
Underwear and sip, sip said, Everything.
–Gary Soto
-----
My response to her was:
Junior League women are upper middle to upper class women and of the ilk of ladies who lunch (and volunteer).
This man is having delicious fantasies of undressing and soiling their cool and proper exteriors through mildly wine colored glasses so when she asks him what do you do, he responds to them with sexual flirtation by saying that he DOES everything...
This poem is coming from the perspective of a middle aged man. He now has a house on a hill, a job, children, and can actually discern the difference between what a bad and good Napa wine tastes like. Time has worn away his naturally thin youthfulness so he remembers fondly the summer where he didn't need to have a job and just lying in the sun kept his body thin at a time in his life. He reminisces for a time when these young women might have actually looked at him as a viable sexual partner. He knows in his head that they wouldn't look at him that way now but the fantasy of being sexual with these young women is a lusty, wine fueled flirtation...
It also occurred to me that that there might be an argument made that he isn't drinking literal wine at all, but becoming 'drunk' by sipping on the beauty of these women he refers to as these fine Napa wines.
Is this something you need for school? Because I can take this a little further...(I’m hoping that all of those years of having been in the honors classes in English will paid off for someone....)
If you are going under the assumption that there are metaphors embedded then the author leaves you to question if:
1. His brother is one of those 60/70's kids who liked being in a basement or dark room listening to acid rock with posters and black lights and therefore he called him a vampire OR if they had so little in common he just thought that his brother sucked.
2. There can also be an argument made that the author also might keep you guessing whether the “remaindered” author is his wife. (Remaindered book are those left unsold.) He might leave you questioning whether he (at middle age) begins to see his wife's flaws. Her books that didn’t quite sell out, that their relationship is no longer one of lovers but of friendship as long marriages often end up; Her body beginning to lack estrogen as her face begin to sprout a hair or two on her chin—his contempt for both of their ages thinks of her “a bearded fellow” and no longer as the object of his sexual desire when compared to the fresh and promising young women sitting in front of him.
-----
And after my well thought out explanation of the poem, a male mushroom head responded as follows:
-----
If you would have asked me 10 minutes ago, "Do you think a story about a guy wanting to fuck young women could be gayer than Liberace?" Naturally, I would have said no.
After reading that faggy tripe, I now know differently.
Ah, poetry.
-----
I laughed.
I don’t think you could have been more than six or seven the summer when we all sat on my porch and I asked you what time you had to be home—you told me 7 pm and I said that it was really too bad because the fairies that lived under the ivy didn’t come until 7:30. You said to me with all the seriousness that you could muster how much you wished you would be allowed to stay outside to see them. You believed my stories and loved giving you that gift. You were part Irish; you HAD to believe in fairies.
I dream all of the time about being in your house with the secret window for the milk deliveries. Truth be told, my dream house still is an old colonial like yours was. I remember seeing you when I was wearing this nautical inspired white suit one summer and you telling me that you were going to buy one like that when you were out of nursing school. Do you remember how crazy that hospital was? Your mother worked there, my mother worked there, Jimmy’s mother worked there…overtime, time owed…I forgot to tell you last night that Karyn who worked in the pharmacy with you and I recently became back in touch with each other. I wish I could go back in time; it was happier then.
In a blink you were married and had children of your own. But when I look at you and how beautiful you are as a woman, I still see the baby with the blonde curls that turned red; your eyes still smile the same way that they did when you were six months old… but what I didn’t know about you until last night was that you had your father’s voice… and that you still loved listening to my stories.
So since we giggled about it, I’m sharing last night’s story for posterity.
-----
A Hollywood Blonde asked about a poem this way:
Never understood this poem. It's supposedly very good. Any help would be appreciated.
-----
“Chitchat with the Junior League Women”
A Junior League woman in blue
Showed me enough panty
To keep my back straight,
To keep my wine glass lifting
Every three minutes.
Do you have children? she asked.
Oh, yes, I chimed. Sip, sip.
Her legs spread just enough to stir
The lint from my eyelashes,
Just enough to think of a porpoise
Smacking me with sea-scented kisses.
The Junior League woman in yellow
Turned to the writer next to me,
Bearded fellow with two remaindered books,
His words smoldering for any goddamn reader.
This gave me time. Sip, sip,
Then a hard, undeceitful swallow
Of really good Napa Valley wine.
My mind, stung with drink,
Felt tight, like it had panty hose
Over its cranium. I thought
About the sun between delightful sips,
How I once told my older brother,
Pale vampire of psychedelic music,
That I was working on a tan.
That summer my mom thought I had worms
I was thin as a flattened straw,
Nearly invisible, a mere vapor
As I hiked up and down the block.
I rolled out an orange towel in the back yard
And the sun sucked more weight
From my body. After two hours,
My skin hollered… I let the reminiscence
Pass and reached for the bottle,
Delicately because I was in a house
With a hill view held up by cement and lumber.
A Junior League woman in red
Sat with her charming hands
On her lap, studying us two writers,
Now with the panty hose of drunkenness
Pulled over our heads and down to our eyes.
What do you do exactly, Mr. Soto?
And I looked at her blinding
Underwear and sip, sip said, Everything.
–Gary Soto
-----
My response to her was:
Junior League women are upper middle to upper class women and of the ilk of ladies who lunch (and volunteer).
This man is having delicious fantasies of undressing and soiling their cool and proper exteriors through mildly wine colored glasses so when she asks him what do you do, he responds to them with sexual flirtation by saying that he DOES everything...
This poem is coming from the perspective of a middle aged man. He now has a house on a hill, a job, children, and can actually discern the difference between what a bad and good Napa wine tastes like. Time has worn away his naturally thin youthfulness so he remembers fondly the summer where he didn't need to have a job and just lying in the sun kept his body thin at a time in his life. He reminisces for a time when these young women might have actually looked at him as a viable sexual partner. He knows in his head that they wouldn't look at him that way now but the fantasy of being sexual with these young women is a lusty, wine fueled flirtation...
It also occurred to me that that there might be an argument made that he isn't drinking literal wine at all, but becoming 'drunk' by sipping on the beauty of these women he refers to as these fine Napa wines.
Is this something you need for school? Because I can take this a little further...(I’m hoping that all of those years of having been in the honors classes in English will paid off for someone....)
If you are going under the assumption that there are metaphors embedded then the author leaves you to question if:
1. His brother is one of those 60/70's kids who liked being in a basement or dark room listening to acid rock with posters and black lights and therefore he called him a vampire OR if they had so little in common he just thought that his brother sucked.
2. There can also be an argument made that the author also might keep you guessing whether the “remaindered” author is his wife. (Remaindered book are those left unsold.) He might leave you questioning whether he (at middle age) begins to see his wife's flaws. Her books that didn’t quite sell out, that their relationship is no longer one of lovers but of friendship as long marriages often end up; Her body beginning to lack estrogen as her face begin to sprout a hair or two on her chin—his contempt for both of their ages thinks of her “a bearded fellow” and no longer as the object of his sexual desire when compared to the fresh and promising young women sitting in front of him.
-----
And after my well thought out explanation of the poem, a male mushroom head responded as follows:
-----
If you would have asked me 10 minutes ago, "Do you think a story about a guy wanting to fuck young women could be gayer than Liberace?" Naturally, I would have said no.
After reading that faggy tripe, I now know differently.
Ah, poetry.
-----
I laughed.
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