Two Serious Ladies is named for the 1943 short novel by Jane Bowles.

“I have my happiness, which I guard like a wolf, and I have authority now and a certain amount of daring, which, if you remember correctly, I never had before.”


― Jane Bowles
Two Serious Ladies

 

Five Poems by Gina Abelkop

Grown, No Thank You

Whating maketh me feel so big a hate     Them lily-livering
bitch-faced strangler women     Of a breed I am usually want
to love with mine squalling pucey bosom     I love them
bitch-faced babes on usual    Oh no not this time    Yes this
timing is wrong     I think about it and it is like one big
yellow green loogie hocked into an eye    Whose eye    Not
her eye   God forbid    Don’t co-mingle our body beats      Please
Act not likey a little wittle baby boot    Strap it to your
thigh instead      Wear piggy pantaloon baby boots as if
you were a strangler woman    Which you are    By the way
You are           Yes you like strangling    I like to pinch pinch
a little bit of thick thigh    Every time I say it I wheeze
If only not to set mine weasley miniature eyes    If the eyes
are not big you have a very ugly face   I admit to it    I live
in it     Besides the point which is     Oooo this big girl hate  

Sucker

Bland meat, suck pig    you, um
little little little! Suck you um,
up like a bitty tri-tip    Lovely bun
in my whacked out tram
I give in to the whim of it
Baby beets and bossy women I want
A Fleetwood Mac t-shirt   But I want it
To say “crystal visions”  and I want it
to say I keep them to myself
Because of course I do     I write them down
I placate my mama-brain  She’s not picky
She just liked to eat   after all- don’t
forget- we’re of the same brick trip,
you and I    We ate of similar stone
Now what’s there to strap
together but my harness    Your bit
I am not alluding to sex    I do really
mean horses   I do really mean meat
I do lay down at night   I do
pick a wedding dress for Margaret
Flimsy silk    Looks good    I’m not seventeen
I’m a sucker    A sick sucker   in love  

from Dora Sharlock Presents: Ladies of the ‘80s

‘Lo, tinder and hold--
reverse the valley!

Up over them big mountains     done in
salt-slitted snow   breathes my town
Manipulating valley, town slopped
down amongst sky and farther’n
sea      Where I make my living

dancing for the good      great
men       who manhandle our land     drawing
gold from untidy gulches      Burying
                                                       their children

I sneak away,        lay by the river

Hold sweet Anna’s hand in our shared
wooden bedroom    When

I tell you more     you will be
unsurprised and          bidden by
your good faith to        congratulate
our happiness      in spite of its    
propriety-dissolving      practice  

Grand House

Up with the land

Up with the land

I came into     it    and it     came
to me     Mar not your song    or fruit for it

Is coming in with the land    Along with     the sky

I am feeling it in you      only a little bit      Get it

together    Incantatorily     Go into that house     Go  

On Voluptuousness, Time Travel and Lesbianism

The closest you can get to being a cannibal without being jailed is eating another woman’s pussy blood. This is only cannibalism if you’re a woman (defined as feeling a feeling of “I am a Woman.”)  Only lesbians can be cannibals. “Your love is so edible to me! I eat cannibals!” sing Total Coelo. When I heard the song- the beat and then the words- I knew that it was a song for lesbians. Last night when I was in class I knew I was a lesbian because I couldn’t stop thinking, as the professor talked about Nietzche and Wagner and the pure emotive living that is music, that more than anything in the world I wanted to be getting fisted by this woman I want. Fucking was on my mind because I am reading Tales of the Lavender Menace by Karla Jay and she writes quite lustily. For example, she writes of one lover whose “favorite time of year was summer, when she wanted me to use cucumbers, zucchini, and corn on the cob as organic dildos.”

Fuck the use of “purple prose” as a putdown. Flowery, too-pretty words strung together with an air of purpose, almost certainly female: bad bad bad form, ladies. Of course if you are doing bad form because you are aware it is the way you’re meant to live then you know that lavender prose (and let’s give it some justice by granting the lushly sneering jibe towards women’s work a more defined shade of color: that which marks the cannibals) is the way to go. Lavender prose can look deceptively simple if you say the words randomly but stitched together in perfect order they will immediately bloom your entirety in voluptuous, bombshell pink roses.

James Baldwin is one person who somewhat recently saved my life (operating under the belief that one’s life is continuously saved throughout a lifetime). Not because of giving up but just needing a reason (which grows in you every minute) to spend days awake, and some nights too. There is a time in the middle of night with my door closed when it truly feels like 1800-something, even with my computer in front of me. I time travel in dreams which is one of the most spectacular, hysterically wonderful things that has ever happened to me.


Gina Abelkop's first book, Darling Beastlettes, is out now from Apostrophe Books. Visit her online at The Moon Stop (themoonstop.blogspot.com).

 

Two Poems by Diana Arterian

He Took Her as His Wife by Kate Zambreno