Dear Girlhood

Abstract

Dear Girlhood Mary Angelino (bio) 1. Anagrams for girls who don’t play in the sea My sleepyhead—all heeltapsand leash, all pleatedand petaled from playdates— ahead are steeplesof sea, pedestals of atlaselapsing. Don’t let girlhood drift, don’t dare it to drag—my eyelash, my sad little eel. So what? I’ll deal.I’m gloried, adored, she sings, haloed and splayed on the shore. (I’m all plea,no play.) Death an eyeshade,a pale lady, wades into the deep. [End Page 28] 2. Song for queer girls For catching pollywogs (those squirmycommas) with a net or hands or anychipped wayward old mug; for mud-cakedBarbie’s hair, for the cleft of plastic (like a comma, net, or hands)between her legs, for her shinyhair and her clefts of plasticbreasts and for Velcro’s easy rip-away between her legs; for my shiny,wooly strokes. For loving the neighbor girl’sbreasts and for Velcro’s easy rip-awaywhen I loved myself, for my pillow’s wooly strokes. For loving the neighbor girland her mother’s, Be back when the streetlightscome on. For loving myself, my pillow,and all the girls who stayed out past dark, after the streetlights came on, their voiceschipped wayward old mugs. For mud-cakedgirls who stayed out past dark.For Barbie’s hair. For the cleft of plastic. [End Page 29] 3. How girls are made She’s old enough to wonder how it’s done.Her thumbs slide across the screenand those little comet tails between the letterstrail, they clip made down to mad and dam and me,or stretch it to demons or demand—see howmaiden weaves herself in? Sometimesa cheerful mead, a willful dame. A willful dame, a cheerful mead—sometimes a maiden weaves herself in.See how it stretches to demons or demand,how dam and mad clips down to me?Between the letters, those little comet tailsslide across the screen; her thumbswonder how it’s done. She’s old enough. [End Page 30] 4. How the girl got thick skin First, she felt it thin and shrinklike a child caught in a lie,so she took it off and carried it.Please don’t ask how she looked underneath (like a child caught in a lie),splashing through the creek.Please don’t ask how she lookedwhen she hid, when a predator—mid-hunt— splashed through the creek. You want toknow how she stretched and toughenedthat hide when the predator was through,how it felt to slip back into her skin— its arguments stretched and toughened,outgrown. She took it off, carried it,turned it back into skin, and slipped in.Don’t ask how she looked. [End Page 31] Mary Angelino MARY ANGELINO’s publications include The Arkansas International, The Southern Review, Foglifter, Rattle, The Cincinnati Review, and The Southern Humanities Review, with work forthcoming in The New York Quarterly’s anthology Without a Doubt. She has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and received an honorable mention for the 2019 Auburn Witness Poetry Prize. Her poetry has been anthologized in Best New Poets. She lives in Valencia, California, where she teaches composition and creative writing at College of the Canyons and serves on the Santa Clarita Art Council’s Sidewalk Poetry Project. Fairy tales were my first experience with the image. They taught me to see things in my mind’s eye: the Beast’s blood-red roses, Sleeping Beauty’s thorn-choked tower, the gnarled hand of the witch holding out the apple. In “Dear Girlhood” (a love letter of sorts), I let the images from my childhood haunt and pout and sing, tangle and untangle themselves through their forms—anagrams, pantoums, and the mirror poem. Copyright © 2023 Wayne State University Press