Marvel (at Woman) or Woman: Last Monster
- Marvel (at Woman) or Woman:Last Monster
It is like being the alien within the alien,living the everyday instances of anger.Sometimes monster,sometimes battling or baffling.Whatever snarls, whatever guilts,whatever heralds us into new landsis a conundrum,is a mystery: sphinxated.
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A. Sphinx = woman combining masculine intellect & feminine sexuality.
B.
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What kind of monster is woman? What kind of monster is a woman who demonstrates her demons; who demonstrates her exoticisms; who demonstrates her intelligence, and her tender? What kind of monster is part puzzle, part breast, part mystery, part best?
It is a sacred hunt being woman, between being heat and heart. We marvel, yet we are marveled at. We are the marveled and the marvel itself. We marvel at the world, as it is, and we marvel at the way we are not; at the way we are not man; at the way we are not stone or sand or sea; at the way we are not even seen; at the way our own soft is not our own, nor our own disruption, or nature. Even our wonder is not wondered at.
In our riddle is the way we live. In our riddle is the way we walk this life sunlit; in our riddle is the way we walk this life unscathed.
Your destruction is in your foolery; your destruction is in your own trickery; your destruction is in your insistence. Your trickery is in your stubbornness; your trickery is in your firm, your hand, and your steeled; your trickery brings about your destruction; your stupidity brings about our devouring. [End Page 172]
Leah Umansky is the author of The Barbarous Century, among others. She earned her MFA in Poetry at Sarah Lawrence College and is the curator and host of The COUPLET Reading Series in NYC. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in such places as POETRY, Guernica, The Bennington Review, The New York Times, and Poetry Northwest. She is #teamkhaleesi & #teambernard. Visit her at www.leahumansky.com or @Lady_Bronte.
