In Which Vivienne Reveals Her Cougar Nature.

Listen: there are things I am not proud of.

The top things on my list is this: I have a crush on Paul Kevin Jonas the Second.

Look, I know that this is not right.  I know that this is not right at all, in any way.  But their music is just so catchy!  So upbeat!  Such a positive message for the kids these days, and the kids these days really do need a positive message, don’t they?  He has luscious curly hair!  He performed on So You Think You Can Dance! Cat Deely loved him!  Loved him!  And Cat Deely is eleven years older than he is, which means that if I am only seven years older than he is, that’s not bad!  That’s not bad!  Right?

Look, the other thing is this: Vivienne doesn’t know how she feels about this whole cougar thing.  Vivienne means by this that she is excited that the older woman/younger man dynamic is being celebrated and appreciated, in some sense, but Vivienne at the same time also doesn’t know how she feels about all of the Fuss about this.  Take, for instance, this fact: were Vivienne to realize her sweet sweet dream of meeting Kevin Jonas backstage at So You Think You Can Dance? and taking him into her arms and — well, what have you.  Were Vivienne to realize this sweet sweet dream and begin a long and exciting and glamorous and Of Course Scandalous affair with Kevin Jonas, Vivienne would be labeled A Cougar, as she is seven years older than he.  Now, look.  Here is a brief list of how many years older than her Vivienne’s last boyfriends have been (I’m leaving that sentence.  So there.  Do what you will with it): 7, 6, 7, and 14.  Were these men labeled as Cougars?  No!  Did anyone even mention this difference in age?  No!  So why must Vivienne receive a label just because she wants to buy a Kevin Jonas-printed pillow so that she may rest her weary head upon his glory every night?  Why does this make her any different — any worse — than the man who was 13 when she was 6?

And now, Vivienne must stop thinking of Kevin Jonas’ glory and perform her writing assignment, inspired by section 3 of Ulysses.  And maybe, a little bit, by the thought of running her fingers through Kevin Jonas’ curls.

Sitting bluefurred and her chair highwheeled, she the great guardian of good morals, spouting no wine but grape juice no drinking nor dancing no smoking on Sundays no laundrybasket emptied then re-filled with clean no hands in the dishsoap no bubblegloved forearms the treelights asparkle and from the far kitchen’s corner a clink hidden, Merlot splashed between glass globeside and globeside.  The cousins’ children on legs unsteadied running foreheaded against table tops, the gravy boat spitting.  Small wooden squares of death walled and captured, memento mori those who one draped legs over chair legs and cursed the potatoes, laying their outpushed teeth on the tablecloth freshlaundered and lavendar scent.  The dogcorner, the cousin knelt there with bluevein outsticking, rubber belt in the truckbed, needle and shine.

Don’t call it a comeback.

Dearest, Most Fashionable Reader:

Well hello! Welcome to this Missive of Fashion! Zelda realizes that it has been quite some time since she and the Most Fashionable Vivienne have written. Zelda is writing to you, Most Fashionable Reader, to reveal that she and the Most Fashionable Vivienne apologize for this travesty. Zelda is here to tell you, Most Fashionable Reader, that she and the Most Fashionable Vivienne will soon return to grace the presence of their very own blog. She and Vivienne are also here to tell you, Most Fashionable Reader, that you will not be disappointed when they do. Zelda and Vivienne will return to TheHyacinthGirls.com on the First of October, 2008. At present, they are getting quite comfortable in their alter-alter egos: Vivienne as Bette Davis, and Zelda as Joan Crawford.

Would you, Most Fashionable Reader, like to have a peek at what Vivienne and Zelda will be working on during the month of October? Here it is:

Don’t call it a comeback, Most Fashionable Readers; Vivienne and Zelda have been here for years.

Ooooo!

Listen to the way they slayyyyyyy!

If there ain’t enough of me to go around, I’d rather be left alone.

The Careful and Quite Fashionable Reader may have noticed from Zelda’s previous posts that she is quite fond of the ocean. One might go so far as to say that Zelda is obsessed with it, since Zelda spends most of her free time on the shore and includes the ocean, sand, and/or pelicans in nearly every poem she writes. Now, Most Fashionable Reader, Zelda could lie to you. Zelda could lie and say that she is quite stunning on the shore with her plethora of Swimsuits of Fashion and her sunkissed brown hair blowing ever-so-seductively in the breeze. Zelda could lie to you, but she won’t.

Instead, Zelda will say that instead of being the Seductress of the Atlantic, Zelda is the Cutie Pie of the Atlantic, a sort of nouveau Gidget, with her pigtails and her thick bangs and her Stylishly Retro Swimsuits of Fashion. Zelda will say this, Fashionable Reader — but this, too, is a lie. Here is the Unfashionable Truth, Dear Reader: Zelda is an Utter Beach Disaster. Zelda can be seen from miles away as she approaches the shore, wobbling from the weight of her Beach Chair, her Beach Cooler, and her Beach Bag. Zelda always trips while she searches for the Perfect Spot on the sand, and sometimes Zelda falls. Zelda has great difficulties unfolding her Beach Chair. When Zelda finally settles down on the sand in her Beach Chair, nine times out of ten, she discovers that she has forgotten to shave a leg. When Zelda is not paying attention, dogs come up to her and pee on one of her legs — usually the shaved one. And, immediately after exiting the ocean after an ocean frolic, Zelda’s hair turns into this:

So you, Most Fashionable Reader, can imagine Zelda’s glee when she was delivered this Most Fabulous Piece of News from a Most Fashionable Friend of Fashion: a surfer finds Zelda sexy. (Clearly he has never seen Zelda, Utter Beach Disaster by Day, Wednesday Addams by Night, on the beach itself, but that’s beside the point.) O the joy! O the wonder! O the happy, happy day! Please try and understand, Reader of Fashion. This has been one of Zelda’s Secret Wishes for over two decades. And now, with just that tiny bit of information, Zelda feels that her life is quite close to complete. O happy day, Dear Reader! O happy day!

And here is a song to match Zelda’s mood! A song for all of us! Let’s all see that new horizon underneath that blazing sky! Can you hear the music playing? Can you see the banners flying?

Yes! The poem! Tonight, Zelda has taken Vivienne’s lead and performed line stretching on one of her favorite Guns ‘N Roses songs EVER: “Breakdown.”

Breakdown

I’ve come to know the cold. The beer
cans stack up against me like dominoes.

I am empty, an unmade bed, a form
without substance. A pelican nods itself

to sleep on a distant sandbar. An ice pick
being pulled from a freezer as the lone

taxi makes its way west. The night being
stuck to my back like a dying man’s fingers,

like a pair of hands struggling to regain sense.
The shape of you breaking me. The driftwood

bulkheads remain. I think of the crushed
ice in the corner of the cooler

as a hiding place, a place to rest
my heart on days like this when even the ocean

perspires. The cold shape of nothing
sifting through a swimsuit. There is beer,

there is nonalcoholic beer, and there is tequila.
The organ donors smirking their way

to the front of the line at the pier.
There is salt, and there is a wound. There are

cigarettes snuffed out by the tide. In time,
everything is pulled from the shore to the sea.

There is the scabbing over.
I think of it as home.

Planet Earth Is Blue and There’s Nothing I Can Do

Fashion alert!  Fashion alert!  Vivienne has just now, through the Fashion of Facebook, discovered that there is a band … CALLED THE FASHION!  Vivienne posts The Fashion of The Fashion below:

Upon reflection, however, Vivienne is not sure how Fashionable The Fashion actually are.  For some reason, she was imagining moody boys wearing eyeliner, sighing into the microphone like David Bowie, perhaps with his electric red hair and white face paint, perhaps with very tight pants, and definitely, absolutely with lyrics about the dangerous temptation to simply steer one’s spaceship into space and let the circuit die, the engine go — oh, I can hear you, Major Tom.  Oh, I can hear.

IN FACT, let’s all take a moment to reflect upon the following Undeniably Fashionable Fashion Beyond Any Other Fashion:

IN FACT, let’s all take a moment to, perhaps, take another look at that Undeniably Fashionable Fashion Beyond Any Other Fashion.  IN FACT, let’s all take a moment to, perhaps, remember that moment in our childhood when our parents finally could afford cable and gave us the gift of MTV, and, upon a rare unsupervised moment with this new wonder, we began flipping through channels, and found this Fashionable Apex of Fashion broadcast over the air waves, making the very air itself an Air of Wonder and Fashion, and let’s remember that moment when Bowie’s anguished visage appeared on the screen, and his anguish became such that he could no longer manage playing the guitar, and, instead, stared straight into the camera — no, not straight into the camera, straight into your eyes — no, not straight into your eyes, straight into the Very Most Fashionable Part of Your Very Most Fashionable Soul of Fashion, and you could see the concern in his eyes, and the care, and the deep and intense yet gentle desire, and the love, yes, yes, even the LOVE in his agonized hand gestures, and something melted within you that would never ice over again, and you for the first time felt that Strange Tingle you would later feel every day in Geometry class when David came in and you caught a whiff of his Cool Water, that Very Strange Tingle that would never quite be the same or as glorious as it was, just then, with David Bowie directing all of his Fashionable Fashion through his Impeccably and Exquisitely Fashionably Kohl-Rimmed Eyes of Fashion at your soul, your Soul, your SOUL.

MAN.  I need a cigarette now.

Oh, yeah.  The poem.  The following is a poem made with the constraint of homoconsonatism.  The source text?  The towns I passed during my road trip.

Museum of Appalachia

Laid on_____line_____cut
as a quay_____oh_____eker_____I’d go
cool_____I’ll hone_____raccoon evil_____lie
ice_____lain onto guard_____guest park
my same people_____chalk city
cove_____licks to prick
come_____be real_____undo
gaps_____joy’ll candy
haunt_____save_____I’ll
sit_____ink ice_____irk red
rare time_____not on roads.

A bust of Joan Crawford that looks suspiciously like an ashtray.

[A preface: Dearest, Most Fashionable Reader: Zelda is very pleased and very excited tonight, for, earlier in the evening, Most Fashionable Vivienne of Fashion listened as Zelda recounted an occurrence that had occurred earlier in the week. When Zelda finished recounting, Vivienne bestowed upon Zelda great and wise knowledge of benevolence, goodwill, and fashion. Vivienne revealed that the occurrence that Zelda recounted was not, in fact, an occurrence at all, but that it was, in fact, a beautiful and benevolent mystical vision sent to Zelda by the beautiful and benevolent Anne Carson. Zelda must wait and let the meaning of the beautiful and benevolent vision settle in her mind before she reveals it to you, Most Fashionable Reader. This means that Zelda will write about it tomorrow. But O! The joy! Thank you, Wise and Fashionable Vivienne, Vessel of Fashion! Thank you!]

Now. Zelda is trying to push herself out of her comfort zone. This means that Zelda is becoming more open to doing things that Zelda wouldn’t normally do. So when a Fashionable Friend of Zelda’s invited Zelda to take a class with her, Zelda jumped at the chance. Now this class is not just any class, Dear Reader. This class is a Class of Fashion. This class, Dear Reader, is a Pottery Class. Both Zelda and her Fashionable Friend have admitted that they envision themselves looking like Demi Moore in Ghost, fashionably crafting Wares of Fashion in Fashionable Overalls at the Fashionable Potter’s Wheel while the Righteous Brothers serenade them ever-so-softly.

Now, Zelda realizes that, instead of looking like Demi Moore, she will most likely look like Charlize Theron did in Monster, but even that does not deter her! She knows that, no matter what she looks like at that Fashionable Potter’s Wheel of Fashion, she will walk out of that pottery class with Useful and Fashionable Wares, such as an ashtray that looks vaguely like an ashtray, an ashtray that looks vaguely like a vase, a coffee mug that shares many of the same characteristics as an ashtray, and a bust of the Fashionable Joan Crawford that looks suspiciously like an ashtray. Zelda is incredibly excited!

Oh yeah! The poem!

For this poem, Most Fashionable Reader, I have, as best I can, followed the example of Harry Mathew’s 35 Variations on a Theme from Shakespeare. Due to time constraints, I had to limit my number of variations to thirteen. My source text comes from Ovid:

I love him but I cannot seem to find him.

The Well-Read Reader of Fashion will know that the text comes from the story of Narcissus, and that when Narcissus says, “I love him but I cannot seem to find him,” he is actually speaking of himself, not his beloved in a biblical sense. I say, however, that when we search for our beloveds, aren’t we searching for ourselves as well? So in my poem for the evening, the speaker is actually searching for her beloved. My variations are as follows: 1 Lipogram in i; 2 Lipogram in c, d, f, g, j, k, l, m, p, v, w, x, y, z; 3 Snowball; 4 Lipogram in a; 5 Anagram; 6 Lipogram in e; 7 Missing letter; 8 Emphasis; 9 Another point of view; 10 Double curtailing; 11 Subtle insight; 12 Amplification; 13 Interrogative mode.

13 Variations on a Line from Ovid

1
Love the man, and look for the man.

2
I restrain him. Then I see to him.

3
I am the lone woman, taking moments whenever necessary.

4
I love him — then I lose him.

5
Don a mind font. Hit his vile ocean mime.

6
Fuck him, and by morning, the man is missing.

7
I love him, and I cannot see to find him.

8
I love him, you see. He’s the object of my affection, the last Hot Tamale in the box, the one I’ve lost my sugarcoated heart to, the one I long for when the night begins. I love him and I cannot seem to find him — he, the catamaran on the horizon, the pelican that flew past the rotting pier. He disappeared like a twenty from a back pocket, a lighter from a purse. What I’m really trying to say, I suppose, is this: love and loss can be found in the same sentence quite often.

9
Then try another bar, ya dumb broad!

10
I love, and I cannot.

11
Love, my friends, is merely a journey.

12
When one loves another, much time is spent searching.

13
If love is loss, then what is hate?

Burning in water, drowning.

[Zelda regrets that she did not post on Friday. Zelda knows that she is getting behind, and she is going to remedy this quite soon, she promises. She is disgusted with the fact that she is quite unfashionable.]

Zelda has spent this weekend entertaining, and though she has had — and will still have — great and fashionable fun, she has missed Vivienne and TheHyacinthGirls.com and you, Dearest and Most Fashionable Readers, and fashion in general.

Whilst entertaining, Zelda and her Fashionable Friend spent this afternoon frolicking in the ocean, and Zelda must say that she looked quite stunning and fashionable in her Joan Crawford-esque one-piece swimsuit (the careful Reader of Fashion will know that this is the swimsuit Zelda purchased just last week).

Onward! To the FaOuLiPoWriMoFa poem of the day!

Dearest, Most Fashionable Reader: for some reason, I cannot get Charles Bukowski out of my head. Or, more specifically, I cannot get Charles Bukowski’s Burning in Water Drowning in Flame out of my head, for, ever since the beginning of FaOuLiPoWriMoFa (Fashionable Oulipo Writing Month of Fashion), I have had aforementioned book out on my table, and, since the book’s cover has all the subtlety of a traffic cone, my eye is naturally drawn to it. So. For this poem, I have taken Dearest, Most Fashionable Vivienne’s lead and have constructed an antonymnic translation of Bukowski’s “warm asses.”

cold asses

this Monday morning
the Canadian boys at the Protestant funeral
look especially bad
their wives are in the churches
and the Canadian boys look old
ostrich-nosed with kind weak eyes,
asses cold in loose trousers
they have been given somehow,
their wives are tired of those cold asses
and the old Canadian boys walk with their parents,
there is imagined happiness in their kind weak eyes
as they forget mornings when their homely women —
not now any longer homely —
said such ugly things to them,
ugly things they will always hear again,
and on top of the sun and in the dull of the funeral’s darkness
I see nothing and I sit loudly and rejoice for them
they do not see me looking —
the young nanny is not looking at us
she’s not looking at our eyes;
they frown at each other, talk, run off alone,
cry, do not look at me over their shoulders.
I run over to a booth
put a dime on number eleven and lose a vanilla cookie
with 13 monotone suckers stuck in the bottom
that’s unfair enough for a Protestant
and a naysayer of cold and old and used
joyful Canadian asses.

After the fall from innocence, the legend begins. . .

Dearest Reader: I do believe I have let it be known that I am quite obsessed with the Most Fashionable Movie, Legends of the Fall. I will admit that, even though unmentionable lusts run screaming through my head each time I think of Brad Pitt, Brad Pitt is not my primary obsession when it comes to Legends of the Fall. My primary obsession is, of course, Brad Pitt’s character, the tortured and achingly melancholic Tristan Ludlow. I do not lust after Tristan Ludlow, Most Fashionable Reader. Instead, I find in him a kindred spirit — a Soul Brother, if you will. When Tristan Ludlow was young, he fought a bear. Both lived, and both were injured. Legend has it that since Tristan and the bear shared blood, Tristan would have a wildness deep within him until the end of his days. It could be dormant for years, but it would inevitably rise up within him time and time again, crushing everyone in its path, destroying relationships with the swiftness of a sledge-hammer. But it could not be helped, Dear Reader. It could not be helped, because this wildness was a part of Tristan, like a heart, or a set of lungs, or a kidney. This, Most Fashionable Reader, is why I feel connected to Tristan Ludlow. I feel Tristan Ludlow’s pain. I feel it!

For the poem below, I have used the OuLiPo exercise of noun implantation. I have taken One Stab’s last words in Legends of the Fall (for those Most Unfashionable Readers who do not know One Stab, he is the narrator of the Most Fashionable Movie, Legends of the Fall) and extracted the nouns. I have replaced those nouns with nouns from “The Idea of Order in Key West” by Wallace Stevens.

Legend

That motion we buried. The rage,
we dumped. The wind in a deep shadow
in the upper horizon, I remember.
When he was a sound, I thought summer
would never live to be an old song.
I was wrong about that. I was wrong
about many demarcations. It was those
who loved him most who died young.
He was the night they broke
themselves against, however much
he tried to protect them.
But he had his spirit and a long body,
and he saw his voices grow and raise
their own songs. Summer died in the sea
of the popping coral. He was last seen
in the north boats, hunting. His speech
is unmarked, but it does not matter.
He had always lived in the sky, anyway,
somewhere between this atmosphere
and the other. It was a good distance.

Your Awkward Middle School Flashback

Vivienne’s found herself at the end of a very long and very messy mess of a day, and so will probably be writing a most unfashionable poemlogue. Such things, sadly, must be done.

Let’s abbreviate: Vivienne’s love life generally most resembles a scene she once saw in Florida whilst sitting happily in the backseat of her parents car, admiring the fancy and frenetically green foliage, the tropical flowers and their profusion of blooms, then: the vulture, in the middle of the road, dying, and six of his vulture companions gathered in a circle clearly not of mourning but of pure appetite-whetting.

Given this, Vivienne decided to hearken back to a simpler time for this evening’s poem. Vivienne decided to revisit her 8th grade Algebra I class, where she sat, every day, her crossed legs pressed against the cold steel bars of her desk, and stared at the glorious and magnificently tousled hair which circled the back of one David F.’s hair. David F. was, in a word, beautiful. He was Zack Morris. Or, more so, he was Jordan Catalano, and he made me so mute that I think the only words I ever said to him were “you dropped your pencil.” And yet, and yes, I hoped. I had faith. I purchased a fashionable gray angora twin-set from The Limited and removed the sweater once I got to school. I had faith. One day, one day, David F. would be mine, just as Jordan was Angela’s.

Of course, David F. asked me to the 8th grade semi-formal solely as a way of getting back at his ex-girlfriend and my best friend. Of course, David F. snuck out behind the back of the school cafeteria with his ex-girlfriend and my best friend and a yearbook camera caught them kissing. Of course, David F. later dropped out of school because he couldn’t spell the word “cat.” Of course, David F. now has very little of his formerly fabulously tousled hair, and wears pink polo shirts which never quite fit right, which (the pink polo shirts, I mean) makes Vivienne very glad David F. bestowed his smooches upon his ex-girlfriend and her best friend.

What Vivienne remembers and treasures most about David F. is the hope, and much of that hope existed in the glittering hours of the glittering evenings she’d spend in her upstairs bedroom, playing Frente’s “Labour of Love” over and over, rewinding and replaying the cassette, so many hours and so many evenings that even now, when that song pops up on shuffle in her iPod, her heart clenches for a second and then soars and she thinks — no, she hopes — no, for that second, she knows it just might work out this time.

N+7 Adolescent Verses

Here, we learned that Frente secretly loved Brigham Young.

Old Man Take a Look at My Life — and Please Do Not Ask Me to Dinner.

Tanning, children, is dangerous.

And not just for the reasons your mother and Oprah and the various dermatologists on The Today Show have told you. No, kids, tanning — especially tanning at your apartment complex pool — is dangerous because it makes you vulnerable to The Dirty Old Man.

Here my tale of woe, children, and shudder, and slather yourselves in sunscreen and drape your bodies in caftans and most of all, most of most of all, hide your faces in the shadows cast by a wide-brimmed hat, so that you shall not too suffer this anguish, this agony, this woe.

Vivienne is writing this most unfashionable poemalogue because while she was tanning poolside this afternoon, quietly and calmly reading Euripides’ description of Polyxena’s blood sacrifice, just as she was thinking about how this provided a sense of unity to the Troy story, as the war began with the virgin sacrifice of Iphigenia (though some claim that she was replaced by a deer at the last second, of course, but still) and ended with the virgin sacrifice as Polyxena, The Dirty Old Man appeared, carrying a cooler full of Miller Chill and Captain Morgan’s Margarita Coolers, apparently summoned by the very thought of the term “virgin sacrifice,” apparently wooed by Captain Morgan’s commercials into thinking that Captain Morgan’s Margarita Coolers will actually get him laid. The Dirty Old Man, who is fully ten years older than my father, pulled a chair up beside my chair, and the following discussion ensued:

TDOM: You married?

VHW: No.

TDOM: You got a boyfriend?

VHW: No.

TDOM: Oh, so you’re a lesbian, then.

VHW: No, no, I’m not a lesbian, I’m just sick of men right now.

TDOM: Oh. Okay. You wanna have dinner with me?

Vivienne, at this point, feels no further comment is necessary, other than this: gentlemen. Really. If you wish to woo Vivienne, tell her you enjoy the striking asymmetry of her bikini top. Tell her that her voice is mellifluous as a nightingale’s. Tell her you were just thinking about the bookend virgin sacrifices of Iphigenia and Polyxena. Tell her, for Christ’s sake, that you fucking love Bel Biv Devoe, no matter what anyone says. Just don’t, seriously, Viv-wooing-gentlemen, seriously, do NOT verbalize your assumption that she is a lesbian because she is single, and especially do not ever, ever, EVER follow a verbalization of this kind with a dinner invitation.

Oh, yeah. The poem.

Today’s poem comes from a restriction that Zelda and I invented on the phone last night, called Sponge Osmosity, which we feel has a great deal of potential for the literature. A Sponge Osmosity poem is written by culling phrases overheard from non-written media — television, a film, a conversation, etc. In this case, I Sponge Osmositized my viewing of The Trojan Women, specifically, Hecuba’s first speech. Sadly, I could find no way to incorporate Andromache’s nonverbal wails.

This Marriage Needs No Songs but Only Tears

Which is a beautiful quote, no?

Victorian Women Poets of Fashion

Dear Reader: Zelda has spent most of this evening poring over The Compendium of Fashion and an anthology of Victorian women poets. And a calculus textbook. And a guide to bartending. And Yeats, Lynda Hull, and Hedda Gabler. In fact, if you, Dearest, Most Fashionable Reader, were to enter Zelda’s apartment at this very moment, you would have nowhere to sit. You would have nowhere to rest your purse, your pack of cigarettes, or even your cell phone.

Zelda realizes she needs to get organized.

She is not organized tonight, however. And since she is not organized, she is forced to present you, Dearest, Most Fashionable Reader, with a pair of Very Bad Poems. I have followed Dearest Vivienne’s lead from yesterday (though not nearly as fashionably as Viv did) by looking at two sonnets the way Raymond Queneau suggests; he believed that the “substance of each sonnet lay in its rhymed line-endings.”

So. Below are two poems created by utilizing the end words/phrases from two sonnets by Michael Field. Michael Field was the pen name for two women — an aunt, Katherine Bradley, and her niece, Edith Cooper. A bit like Abigail Van Buren, one may say. Or, perhaps, more like the VC Andrews estate, as Bradley and Cooper were purported to be lovers.

[pomes have gone to the used bookstore to buy Flowers in the Attic and other VC Andrews classics. . . ]