valcapone

My roommate gave me a poem she wrote called 'On Taking It Up,' which is about anal sexing a guy.

Chinaski sent me a poem about a girl with the longest pussy lips he'd ever seen, comparing them to a leech and also referring to them as 'murderous anatomy.'

I think the first poem is pretty good, and the second is going to do about as much damage as beauty/fashion magazines do to women's self esteem. Of course, this apparently means I have a 'feminist agenda' and have rejected the poem for being misogynistic, though the poet argues it isn't a revenge poem. I told him that if I included it, I'd also have to include the story of my Worst Sex Ever, which incriminates him and was written in order to humiliate. I think his poem is similarly meant to embarrass the subject of the poem, and that's not what the magazine is all about. I would rather not give people MORE hang-ups about sex than they already have, and making fun of people's genitals is definitely not going to make people open-minded about getting naked.

We all have parts of our body that we are sensitive about. I'm not going to be the hippie cheerleader who says that all bodies are beautiful, as I've been grossed out by certain people's physical forms, but I'm also not going to use my magazine as a forum for pointing out physical flaws and ridiculing people's physiques. To some extent, you can't help the way you look. Either you won the genetic lottery or you didn't. Yeah, you can have plastic surgery or go to the gym every day or use makeup to cover things up, etc., but sometimes there's no way to hide. I remember seeing a woman on the bus who had these bumps covering all visible skin and wondering if she was contagious. I still have no idea what kind of skin disorder that was (though I did my best to look it up online), and it really creeped me out - so much so that I had to really keep myself from staring in disgust - but I had to assume that it *wasn't* contagious (otherwise why was this person on a city bus?) and that the person in question was probably hella self-conscious about it. She was not a pretty sight, and maybe she was a very nice person, but her looks couldn't really be changed, short of massive surgery. I don't think I would ever write a story about this woman, because I wouldn't know how to be sympathetic without coming off as patronizing or simply cruel. That's surface; now think about how much worse it is when someone reveals a hidden deformity, like your foot-long pussy lips or your headless cock.

Anyway, that's my reasoning. Take it or leave it. I'm going to put in Chinaski's poem called 'Infamous Last Words' instead, as it has a lot of bizarre lines women have used to blow him off.

Speaking of Chinaski, here's a poem by the real Bukowski:

broken

there isn't any
justification
there isn't any
lie
any truth
any love... there aren't any
tugboats, cats, dogs, fish,
skies.

even your suffering is
a mirage.

there aren't any contracts
there isn't any honor
any principle,
and reason has gone
fishing in the
desert.

there isn't any rational basis
there isn't any nobility.

a broken shoelace
is the tragedy:
not the hands of me
strangling that
tiny place
you call
love.

P.S. Holy shit, when were these hot tamales undressing on the metro?! Now I regret not having a bus pass...