April BJP

April's project is based on the poem What Do Women Want by Kim Addonizio. I've been thinking a lot this month about what I want. I'm not sure I've come to any definite conclusion but I know one thing for sure - I want a red dress!


What Do Women Want?

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 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 café, past the Guerra brothers
slinging pigs from the truck and onto the dolly,
hoisting the slick snouts over their 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.

March BJP

I think I'm actually caught up now! I've already started April and plan to have it finished by the end of this week.

A short explanation for March: Over the last year I've lost 45 pounds and am still working to lose more weight. I love the Venus of Willendorf figure and she is kind of a symbol for me of, among other things, learning to accept myself as I am even while wanting to change. The following poem is part of Transcendental Etude by Adrienne Rich. It expresses how I feel about a lot of changes taking place in my life right now. I really liked doing this one although it was a little difficult to work on sometimes. I'm not sure the pink outline really goes with the other colors but I couldn't decide what to use so I went with pink since it's my favorite color!

But there come times –perhaps this is one of them—

when we have to take ourselves more seriously or die;

when we have to pull back from the incantations,

rhythms we’ve moved to thoughtlessly,

and disenthrall ourselves, bestow

ourselves to silence, or a severer listening, cleansed

of oratory, formulas, choruses, laments, static

crowding the wires. We cut the wires,

find ourselves in free-fall, as if

our true home were the undimensional

solitudes, the rift

in the Great Nebula.

No one who survives to speak

new language, has avoided this:

the cutting-away of an old force that held her

rooted to an old ground

the pitch of utter loneliness

where she herself and all creation

seem equally dispersed, weightless, her being a cry

to which no echo comes or can ever come.