Monday, November 12, 2007

Red dresses...

I wish you could see the new dress I'm wearing today. It's a dress for chasing squirrels in the park; for catching every train you think you might have left it too late to get; even for writing things that make the reader gasp. I'm struggling to keep up with it to be honest, so it definitely deserves its own poem.

Which is lucky, because that's exactly what we're about to do in my writing class later this morning. Not just write poems to my dress, of course, but about the clothes you put on that make you just know you can rule the world. Do men have those? Perhaps a red tie or a red t-shirt does the job as well, although somehow neither would make me feel I want to walk on tip-toes or do pirouettes in between sorting out international crises. Anyway, part of the inspiration comes from the poem: ‘WHAT DO WOMEN WANT?’by Kim Addonizio. You can hear her read it here but meanwhile here's a taster:

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


And to move to the end of Kim's poem, here's my other writing prompt for today - what would you like to wear to be buried in?

5 comments:

Clare said...

I wore a new dress out to dinner the other night and Nick told me afterwards that it made him feel proud to be walking into the dining room with me. It makes me want to wear that outfit every day.

Sarah Salway said...

Ooo wear it tomorrow, Clare and I'll wear mine!

Anonymous said...

I want to be buried in my furs and gold armbands and neckring, like a Viking princess, a female Beowulf, with the torches flickering and wolves howling in the forest round about, carried to my final resting place on a bier of bearskin, narwhal tusk in right hand and a sword in the other, while the tribe keens softly. At my funeral, I want to be dressed in my slinky cocktail gown of lime green satin with its fringed hem and sequined neckline, ebony cigarette holder stuck in my clenched teeth with a Turkish cigarette burning, a sidecar cocktail perched on the coffin lid and Scott Joplin playing on the funeral parlour’s organ. I want to be buried my full academic regalia: crimson Oxford-cut gown, D Litt et Phil hood with purple and gold silk ribbons, square cushioned cap; my theses and dissertations reverently laid on my breast, arms crossed over them, while choirboys sing the Lachrimosa beneath Gothic vaulting and colleagues clear their throats gruffly. I want to go to my end wrapped in thin white Kashmiri cotton, the end whipping across my face in the cold wind off the Himalayas, garlands of marigolds on my body, borne aloft by family and wailing friends to the towers of death, drums and flutes playing while the vultures circle above in the pale blue sky. I want to go to my funeral eviscerated, my brains drawn gently out through my nostrils, stuffed with perfumed natron and swathed in long long bandages, ceremoniously accompanied by jewels, works of art, gold ornaments - all that was of value to me in life - and bearing prayers to the gods. In short, I need to cut a figure of some note at my funeral even though when I get there, I shall not care.

Jan said...

Great post, SArah. Loved it.

Sarah Salway said...

Thanks Jan, and beautiful J Malherbe - 300 words exactly if I'm not mistaking. We are taking over the world...