what.do.women.want.

what do women want

by:kim addonizio

i want a red dress.

i want it flimsy and cheap,

i want it too tight, i want to wear it

until someone tears it off of me.

i want it sleeveless and backless,

this dress, so no one has to guess

what's underneath.i want to walk down

the street past Thrifty's and the hardware store with all those keys glittering in the window, past Mr.and Mrs. Wong selling day-old donuts in their cafe, past the Guerra brothers slinging pigs from the truck and onto the dolly, hoisting the slick snouts overtheir shoulders. i want to walk like i'm the only woman on earth and i can have my pick.

i want that red dress BAD.

i want it to confirm

your worst fears about me,

to show you how little i care about you

or anything except what

i want. when i find it, i'll pull that garment

from its hanger like i'm choosing a body

to carry me into this world, through

the birth-cries and the love-cries too,

and i'll wear it like bones, like skin,

it'll be the goddamned

dress they bury me in.

You Don't Know What Love Is.

by: Kim Addonizio

You Don't Know What Love Is but you know how to raise it in me like a dead girl winched up from a river. How to wash off the sludge, the stench of our past. How to start clean. This love even sits up and blinks; amazed, she takes a few shaky steps. Any day now she'll try to eat solid food. She'll want to get into a fast car, one low to the ground, and drive to some cinderblock shithole in the desert where she can drink and get sick and then dance in nothing but her underwear. You know where she's headed, you know she'll wake up  with an ache she can't locate and no money and a terrible thirst. So to hell with your warm hands sliding inside my shirt and your tongue down my throat like an oxygen tube. Cover me in black plastic. Let the mourners through.