I love this poem.

[jademermaid]

"What Do Women Want?"
by Kim Addonizio

I want a red dress.

I want it flimsy and cheap,

I want it too tight, I want to wear it

until someone tears it off me.

I want it sleeveless and backless,

this dress, so no one has to guess

what's underneath. I want to walk down

the street past Thrifty's and the hardware store

with all those keys glittering in the window,

past Mr. and Mrs. Wong selling day-old

donuts in their cafe, past the Guerra brothers

slinging pigs from the truck and onto the dolly,

hoisting the slick snouts over their shoulders.

I want to walk like I'm the only

woman on earth and I can have my pick.

I want that red dress bad.

I want it to confirm

your worst fears about me,

to show you how little I care about you

or anything except what

I want. When I find it, I'll pull that garment

from its hanger like I'm choosing a body

to carry me into this world, through

the birth-cries and the love-cries too,

and I'll wear it like bones, like skin,

it'll be the goddamned

dress they bury me in.

Comments

[morty-baby.livejournal.com]

I love this goddamned poem!

I intend to be cremated but HEY I just thought of this - at least I could freak out the cremators by wearing it. Surely they at least GLANCE. I also intend to smear a buncha RED lipstick past the liplines in a garish fashion.

[myrrhdusa.livejournal.com]

You know, I don't know you all that well, but I do know that you would probably do that.

[morty-baby.livejournal.com]

I'm going to be cremated as I am a waste of space while alive, why waste it after my passing? But I have money set aside for a nice little bench with a plaque to be set along the trail with a view of my favorite beach. I often sit on such a bench now, perhaps it would be cheaper for my daughter to just pry off the plaque on that one and replace it with my own and spend the money on drugs and loose men. Maybe I will just spend the money on drugs and loose men before I die myself. Hey, how about next week?

I DO intend to have a lavish funeral, though. I get periodical pictures taken of me waving, this being for the obligatory obituary picture in the newspaper and intend to have a pompous THEME funeral with enough money set aside for an open bar so that the bereaved can drunkenly duke it out in their rubber chicken suits whilst weaving about my guitar-shaped coffin, stretched out along the frets with a large CUBAN cigar inserted in my pursed lifeless lips. I was supposed to be dressed resplendently in a thparkly Elvis suit but hey, a slutty red dress would do just as well. At some point in the merry-making, I will be rigged to sit up and wave goodbye with my red lipstick sssmeared about and it will be a wondrous affair. I can hardly wait.

[myrrhdusa.livejournal.com]

Your visuals are amazing.

Wait...which pursed and lifeless lips?

[saachi.livejournal.com]

Love this!!!!!