Hattie of Legend

Mina Loy + Sex Kitten

I was inspired to write a quick poem tonight. Really, the inspiration is a mixture of reading the modernist poet Mina Loy, wanting to jump the boyfriend ‘cause I haven’t seen him enough, and all the feminist reading I’ve been doing lately. What a sexy mix.

Basically it’s about… when you find someone who’s on your side. Being of the female persuasion, I think it is often a lifelong guerrilla war to prove I am just as capable, just as rational and intelligent as those of the male persuasion (still don’t get paid as much and, apparently in America, am not capable enough to handle my own uterus but I digress!), and those are the traits I would like to skate by on rather than something like physical appearance. So there has been the misogynistic viewpoint that the mind is of the male domain and the body is of the female. This poem tries to deal with the idea of that- a woman (and a man) is equally the mind and the body. And only after my intellect is secure and respected (aka I don’t have to prove myself as intellectually equal), can the sexual, instinct-driven, animalistic “body” side take over (the side that will physically blow your mind!). Also, my comic geekery makes an appearance as “Superwoman” is the mind and the sexual “cat woman” is the body.

He is just speaking,
ludicrously beautiful lashes
flicking his cheek

His fingers jiggle against the desk
and he just speaks,
Of what? Of something platitudinous,
the big bang perhaps,
or a political conundrum in his homeland,
I don’t know, I’m not listening

Womanhood bestows me
with a thirsty need to prove my worth,
a Superwoman of equal intellect
with the grace of rationality

But he just speaks to me,
oblivious to the feminine curse,
and I don’t care

I stare at him with animal eyes,
oval-like, intently,
and wait for him to stop speaking,
to be a cat woman