When I Was the Virgin of Westchester, and: When I Was The Donna Reed Show, and: When I Was Infertile, and: Metastasis, and: Helplessly Hetero
Rent from DeepDyve- When I Was the Virgin of Westchester, and: When I Was The Donna Reed Show, and: When I Was Infertile, and: Metastasis, and: Helplessly Hetero
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- When I Was the Virgin of Westchester
I spent every blessed dawn in the chapelthat beat on campus like a big cool heartdesigned to extinguish sizzling coeds. Held
in myrrh, I hunkered in my pew, petdove to the angels both arch and analwho hovered wholesome in white white white
and adorned me with lilies, then stifledmy urge to mouth and rip and tongue and bleedwith promises of wings and wisps. Girl
yet woman, I esteemed the saints with their redhearts blooming outside their blouses,their celibate camaraderie with God.
"Sex!" my boyfriend said, and I was arousedbeyond my fear of boiling oil, my dearreligion crammed into crannies. Spouse
or not, I closed my eyes 'til I couldn't hearthe whisperings of Moses or the dinof Pope Paul VI or the solipsistic tears
of my guardian angels as I gave into my own Glorious Mysteries, bellsringing sweet and spectacular with sin. [End Page 118]
"What these poems have in common is a formal impulse that expresses itself in rambunctious ways. The poems in terza rima join a series of musings that have arrived over the past fifteen years like quirky visitors, a tic that interrupts my inclination toward prose (as in 'Metastasis')—and always opening with the same phrase, 'When I Was …' They're fun, and they allow that distance the imposition of form often permits for memory: tricky, imagined or circumvented. In the case of 'Helplessly Hetero,' the text was found in an old Dell Book of Logic Problems belonging to my daughters and collaged unmercifully into a pantoum."
Maureen Seaton's sixth solo book of poems is Cave of the Yellow Volkswagen (Carnegie Mellon, 2009). She authored a memoir, Sex Talks to Girls (University of Wisconsin Press, 2008), winner of the Lambda Literary Award, and coedited, with Denise Duhamel and David Trinidad, Saints of Hysteria: A Half-Century of Collaborative American Poetry (Soft Skull, 2007). Previous collections have won numerous awards, including the Publishing Triangle's Audre Lorde Award and the Society of Midland Authors Award as well as the Iowa Poetry Prize. The Missouri Review has honored her with both the Tom McAfee Discovery Award and the Editors' Prize in Poetry. In 2011, two book-length poetic collaborations are due: Stealth (Chax Press) with Samuel Ace and Sinéad O'Connor and Her Coat of a Thousand Bluebirds (Sentence Book Award) with Neil de la Flor. The recipient of an NEA fellowship and two Pushcarts, Seaton teaches poetry at the University of Miami.
- When I Was The Donna Reed Show
I had an invincible routine. I cleanedAll Things that Shone on Monday: bathroom,spouse. Tuesday I earned Household Saint for stain
removal. My soul gleamed behind the vacuumWednesday, traveled tip to top, stern to stem.I grew rigorer and mortis. I crooned
like Electrolux electroshocked. Hemmedand mended Thursday. Friday I shopped: DivineMother of A&P, grace-paced and amened,
round pearl face rapt in cellophane. Minewas a clipped coupon of a wingèd week,all bride and immolation, a fine
portrait of the hausfrau as an antiquedoctrine, the drink the only way to makeright my robotic mysticism. Meek,
I switched to lush on Friday night, sleekas a green silk sheath—Pour me a Dewar's—then cracked open Saturday with a headache
the heft of Jupiter split into moonsand swinging scythes. It was Cold Duck, aspirinand mass on Sunday: God-holy truth. [End Page 119]
"What these poems have in common is a formal impulse that expresses itself in rambunctious ways. The poems in terza rima join a series of musings that have arrived over the past fifteen years like quirky visitors, a tic that interrupts my inclination toward prose (as in 'Metastasis')—and always opening with the same phrase, 'When I Was …' They're...
