Taking Up Space (and Other Feminine Pleasures Indulged While Studying the Zuihitsu)
A line forms next to a vulva the size of three large dinner plates.
I’m waiting with my sons at Chapter One, a coffee shop in Plattsburgh, examining ropes of pink fabric woven & twisted into “Petals,” & Googling the artist, who says she gets inspiration from living in a woman’s body in this world.
]::[
I’ve been undone & patched up.
Even the face I remove at night leers back from the washrag, Rachel writes in a letter to Naomi, A woman’s portrait left out in the rain.
Can you say bleeding in a poem & be taken seriously?
So what.
]::[
Consider this partial list of reasons to dismiss the patriarchy -->
Too many armpit stains.
Too much racket.
DC blocking a scene where Batman performs oral sex on Catwoman because heroes don’t do that.
That Irene must contend with having to keep her shirt on --> I began to speak in my head as the naked one, // & the other went clothed into the world.
]::[
I am the shell & the soft belly. Fuselage & wanderlust. Canopy & brambles.
Above: Leaves of sugar maple & American beech.
Below: Spruce needles & mushroom caps, the x’s & o’s of the forest floor soft on the toes of the red-spotted newt.
When you said beautifully wrought, Kimiko tells BOMB, I thought you said beautifully raw.
]::[
The day of the birth you hold the baby first, then the emptiness.
‘Complete incompleteness’ might serve as a haven for women artists, Freesia muses when talking about the zuihitsu. Such subversions may interrupt power, upset façade & invite truth-telling.
I write, Dear E – Setbacks. Let’s postpone. She responds with praise for the power of the pause.
When I write, Dear J – We don’t know our story ‘til we say it out loud, she replies, Amen, Sister.
]::[
Like a large scarf, I drape over myself to create an alter and altar. Light a candle: purple for power & wisdom, charged beneath the new moon for a fresh start.
I cover myself like a field of daisies.
Cover myself like a second skin.
My hands fit my hands like gloves. My feet already broken in by my feet.
]::[
I master the sonnet so I can break free of it (or let it tie me up when that’s what I crave).
Radical when a woman uses contraptions of the canon for her own pleasure.
]::[
All those times I clambered into the pocket of my grandmother’s apron, childhood’s best hideout is still the woods.
The woods. I continue to strap its double OOs to my sneakers, roller skate to the tree line.
Like each foot has always known how to cut loose.
]::[
My lawyer tells my ex’s lawyer & his lawyer tells him: Your request to ban her from writing about the marriage is denied.
“Feeling akin to liberation,” says Tina on the zuihitsu.
]::[
Pleasure, a good swing of the ax.
Pleasure, lying in June grass, which survives winter & rises so quickly no one can keep up.
Pleasure, I’m caught at night on the wildlife cam doing wildlife things.
]::[
Eight truths & one lie about the clitoris -->
She is the thing with feathers.
She honeymoons in Rochester.
She plays Maureen in a local production of RENT.
She is a plaintiff in a class-action suit.
She beats Bobby Flay.
She knows the etymology of embouchure.
She is late for her train.
She eats frozen green grapes to lose weight.
She floats in the pool on a raft shaped like a pizza slice.
]::[
Underlined in my copy of The Narrow Road to the Interior --> That it was cultivated by a woman feels significant —as a writing space for women.
& this --> Long erratic pieces into which I can thrash around.
]::[
In the music video for this reclamation, a marching band takes the field. All plumes and spats.
A drumline in every chest.
The stories of triumphant women blare like trumpets.
]::[
Pleasure, a tongue between my toes.
Pleasure, buying the red dress.
Pleasure, I wear it while dawdling in the woods, unbothered / by the cliché.
]::[
Kimiko says she trusts the qualities of the zuihitsu: subjective, intuitive, spontaneous.
Qualities I trust -->
The way we accordion through healing—half wheezing, half music.
The way a silk scarf over a lampshade romances the whole room.
The way we embody wild dogs. Even our eyes yellow & shine.
]::[
I light “dragon’s blood” incense for purification & protection. Misread the word scent on the label: The true self lingers long after burning.
]::[
Pleasure, a meeting on the trail. Myself and myself. One heading out. One returning.
Pleasure, taking the mic, taking the floor, adding gas to the fire.
Pleasure, I asked the world for more, then took matters into my own hands.
]::[
Some of the men at Albany open mics don’t want to hear my poems about misogyny.
Wait ‘til they hear women write entire books about it!
Direct as arrows. Direct as a finger in your face. Direct as a brick through glass.
]::[
I watch as my neighbor turns her kitchen light on, gloves up, fills a sink with steamy water & feels for the knives. Like her, I’m getting down to business, rummaging around, trying to write hard things, like the letter I wish my mother had written me.
I spread the cremains of grief on the garden & watch vegetables grow, harvest enough tomatoes & Anaheims to share. They go out to the neighborhood like an anthem. Joan Jett’s “Bad Reputation” so loud it echoes down the block.
]::[
What appeases me, or what the Internet calls “a dopamine menu” -->
Frozen jalapeños in the rosé
A sandwich someone else makes
Search history that includes “punk wardrobe for women in their fifties”
Foreplay lasting ‘til each freckle on my thighs has had a mouth on it
Trusting another body with my body
]::[
A pleasure to start over.
]::[
In a workshop on the zuihitsu, Eugenia instructs, Our goal is not to create a narrative but a portrait.
Self-portrait with survival instincts
Self-portrait with houseplants
Self-portrait with fupa
With awkward silence
With unsettled weather pattern
With Super Lemon Haze & Purple Kush
With pillow talk
With a Boston cream donut the size of my head
With menstruation.
With wandering uteri.
Wandering, as in joyride.
Uterus, as in an animal within an animal, says the Wikipedia entry on female hysteria.
Hysteria, as in a woman’s disease marked by sexually forward behavior & a tendency to cause trouble for others.
Self-portrait with my old 10-speed & wind in my hair.
]::[
Astrophysicists compare Galileo’s telescope to a cucumber & Webb to a tennis court. This is a metaphor for human progress.
I grip a stalk of asparagus & a blank page, dismantle one galaxy, birth another. I’ll say it:
GODLIKE.
My voice booms so loud it reddens the high ceiling of daybreak.
And evenings, the feathers of sunset boa around me.
author’s NOTES
This piece owes a debt to Kimiko Hahn, Tina Chang and Eugenia Leigh, whom I know only through their poetry and scholarship. Their work has intensified my affection and appreciation for the zuihitsu, a centuries-old feminist form originating in Japan with The Pillow Book by Sei Shōnagon. I was introduced to the zuihitsu in my regular poetry workshop through Madwomen in the Attic out of Carlow University in Pittsburgh and hope I’ve been able to honor its lineage and tradition.
This poem mentions/quotes the following: Patricia Downs and “Petals” (the artist and their fiber art on display at Chapter One coffee shop in Plattsburgh, New York), Rachel Mennies’ The Naomi Letters (“December 14, 2016,” page 56), an article from The Hollywood Reporter titled “Batman, Catwoman Oral Sex Scene Blocked from Series: ‘Heroes Don’t Do That,’” Irene McKinney’s “Covering Up” (from Vivid Companion), a BOMB magazine interview with Kimiko Hahn, Freesia McKee’s Ploughshares essay on The Narrow Road to the Interior, Hybrida: A Zuihitsu by Tina Chang, The Narrow Road to the Interior by Kimiko Hahn, the YouTube recording of an Authors Publish workshop featuring Eugenia Leigh, the Wikipedia entry for female hysteria, and articles about telescopes from Science magazine and NASA.
Carolee Bennett is a writer and artist living in Upstate New York, where – after a local, annual poetry competition – she has fun saying she has been the “almost” poet laureate of Smitty’s Tavern. She has an MFA in poetry and works full-time as a writer in social media marketing.