The Book of Repulsive Women

Djuna’s ladies are cramped and unhappy-they stagger in the light of another day blooms drooping in jars and all hell at their fingertips

Williams’ women rearrange their hair, wave to the cars passing by; widows in lingerie, or young housewives finished sweeping the floor shadow doors, half-dressed

somebody muffed it someone wanted to joke. You bet, Gwendolyn. But when the jokes pile up what’s left for me to decide

about the glory of my own body drowning not waving you would think my wild haired forbears would give me a little room

to be bored, cramped, and still productive. Miles of women line up across the width of my shoulders these are not angels, not archangels

these are my descendants, ordinary women my shoulders are sore, my neck, my back from what weighs and presses down there.

you can’t you can’t you can’t

you’ll see you’ll see you’ll see

I prayed this morning God let me be unbeautiful

and not deranged because of it.

Let me offer what I can from behind skin that no longer glistens let me forget to powder my nose or put on a hat in the wind

I want to say no one told me this before but they have never stopped telling me the blood in my fingertips

pounding as I reach each arm out ahead of me. It’s going to be some other kind of day can I stand not knowing what kind? I walk away from the dusty shelves place each foot on the ground, eye the skyline, hit the pavement hard.

The title of this poem is the title of Djuna Barnes’s 1915 chapbook, The Book of Repulsive Women. Other poems feeding this poem: William Carlos Williams, “The Young Housewife,” Gwendolyn Brooks, “A Sunset in the City,” Stevie Smith, “Not Waving But Drowning.”

Julia Lisella