Elsa Schiaparelli and Miuccia Prada, at the Met, and: Dear Honeysuckled, Dear Fire Department Marcela Sulak (bio) … with some difficulty [I] obtained seeds from the gardener, and these [I] planted in [my] throat, ears, mouth … elsa schiaparelli To have a face covered with flowers would indeedbe a wonderful thing: bright, metallic insects around the chosen throat,and sprays of crinkled roses in the hair, to weara shoe on my head, to cover my shoulders with monkey fur. My daughteris drawing the clear plastic shoes with the plasticpink heels and plastic tears of chandelier pendants (Prada) and the pink dresswith butterflies. She pulls my journal from my hands,Write pink on top, she commands. All her models accompanied by babies,babies in dresses' bellies, like her father's wife's. Herfavorite hat is the lynx head and paws, with its jaw opened, blood on the chin. To have a face covered with stars would indeed bea wonderful thing, a constellation on your naked chest, to have spilleda cosmos onto your dinner jacket, to havebeen lifted by buoyant shoulder pads through ambiguity. Men respectstrong women. They do not necessarily lovethem. Schiaparelli should know. I want to stay here forever with Daddysays my daughter. I know. I'd love to stay here, too.Not to go back at all again, I agree. To have a mouth full of seedswould be a wonderful thing, to be drowned, a throatfilled with hard, shiny points, like the mark left by the tip of a pencil, poised on a page. No, I mean to stay with Daddy. Youcan go back. Said Miuccia Prada, the women who wear my clothes vary [End Page 131] dramatically. Of course, I'd hope they were cleverand interesting. I'd also hope that my clothes made their lives a littleeasier, that they made them feel happier.Not more beautiful, necessarily, just more of a person. Oh, ifthat's what you want, that's fine with me, I say, splayingPrada's quote across my notebook. Does feeling like a person make lifeeasier, happier? Really? You'd just let me go away from you? As a paperweight, I was always being told that I was too fickle. As a placeholder, I was told I dressed too personally.There is no correct response. What do you want meto say? That to have a face covered with black netting, a doll hat, a chest,an armor against amour and its aftermathwould be a wonderful. To have a face covered with butterflies, to havebutterflies in the stomach, across the shoulders,over the groin, over the kneecaps like scabs. I want you to say you wouldnot let me go. They created hard chic and naïve chic—and ugly chic. And zipper means lightning close, and Schiaparelli designshers from electrical cords. I wouldn't let yougo. Some of Schiaparelli's buttons (naïve chic) are acrobats. Well, I'mgoing anyway. Goodbye. I like those best. Dear Honey Suckled, Dear Fire Department Dear honey suckled, dear poison ivy, dear yaupon with your poisoned berries aiming your leaves at random stars and pretending to be pretty, that was me, that was my foot that broke the poison oak, my shoulder that broke the banana-spider web. I forgot what I forgot there, but what you took was mine. Dear honey suckled, have all the mosquitoes died? Dear me, how awful it all was, and how familiar. Dear home, how I hated you. How I thought something was missing all that time. Dear me, it was me. I was the missing. [End Page 132] Dear asp in the mustang grapes, dear acid, dear sugar boiling hard, dear mother crying, dear rattlesnakes, dear potatoes underneath the house, dear house on its cement blocks, dear crowbar, dear nails, dear wall we ripped out, dear fire that ate you up, dear shotgun shells exploding in the heat, dear fire department, dear deer you were not shot that season. Dear bobcat killed on the bridge, we couldn't swerve, dear creek, dear dredging, dear alligators, dear history...
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Sep 3, 2024
Paul Kim + 1
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