How To Francesca Block (suggested reading .txt) 📖

depression

but oh he had also given her so much

twinkling eyes an insatiable

love of life

the ability to turn sorrow into incandescence

you are an artist he had told her

though he had never shouted

what she really needed to hear

and what, given her tail, was questionable anyway

you my darling, cherished one

are a beautiful

woman

miniature mouse

miniature mouse knows these things

she is still young enough to remember

that once she had a boy attached to her body

their very viscera entwined

their kiss just a natural proximity of lips

and even the roses and the little animals

were further extensions of them

so when they were ripped apart it hurt her more

than those who have utterly forgotten

and she must record the travesty of separation

again and again

the amputated limbs

the gouged out eyes

the double heart torn asunder

this is the task of the young, the artist

who remembers

for valentina

value your musical name your fashion sense

your strength

your light and dark your uncanny ability to appear

resurrected from the dead

believe him when he tells you you are beautiful

it will only hurt you both not to

(it is true besides)

dress as hard-core as you fancy or as sexy

wear black while your skin has enough light

not to absorb it

show off your belly and your breasts

as much as possible

someday when you have wrinkles

you may want to wear the clothes you sneer at now

spit swear dance fuck just don’t smoke cigarettes

and do wear sunscreen

(i wish i had listened to opinionated old women)

don’t be afraid to age

you will be more self-assured thus just

as fabulous as now

(except that then you will know it)

hold on to kind men don’t let them go

searching for the ones who will prove to

you the untrue things

you believe about yourself

choose to believe the ones who see

what you may not

choose to believe in your own myth

your own glamour

your own spell

a young woman who does this

(even if she is just pretending)

has everything

valentina screama

valentina is a doll with a spun sugar pink

pompadour

streaked with white lightning

eyes like ink melting pooling from the pupil

to the iris

to the slashes of lashes

marilyn monroe skin

dead-girl blue fingernails

she comes dressed in a replica of the egyptian gown

that a female vampire wore in the original dracula

long silvery pleats skimming her hips

and a midriff top

held with a giant scarab

but in her black coffin-shaped box is a pair

of tiny black converse

torn black jeans and a joey ramone t-shirt

for her more casual moments

valentina also comes with a tiny silver pistol

that shoots red glitter hearts

like a glam goth cupidette

she has another secret weapon too

every girl wants a valentina screama doll

every boy secretly does too

they don’t know that at night she steps

out of her black box

and watches you sleep

if you have been cruel or false

she bites you with her other secret weapon

the charming fangs hidden behind

her mysterious lips

it is not an unpleasant sensation

more like a tingling chill

like a spider bite that swells with venom and itches

to remind you

of who you might someday be

as i remember it: for lily

because now as i remember it

there was almost always a smell of flowers in the air

all i had to do was read poetry and write

run through the low green hills

once a pack of us walked across town

to a chinese restaurant

ate mu shu vegetables the thin pancakes the thinly

cut strands of cabbage and carrot

and tofu the lovely plum sauce

a dark moonless night

the porch lights of the old houses on

the leaves whispered threatening rain

but we got home dry

my boyfriend stayed in my dorm room he was sweet

as kind as a girl

on weekends we took a train into the city there was

music there were white wine beat

poet bars with sawdust on the floor candlelight

through the glass melting golden

colors everywhere pink taffeta thrift store dresses or

cream lace ones with blue

ribbons spreading out around me like petals

turquoise satin pumps with pointed toes

john doe and exene signing my t-shirt

chinese pastries and vases decorated with dragons

and peonies

a beautiful black-haired girl

who was studying medicine and painted lilies

emerging from darkness

bought me sushi shaped like flowers

told me she had a crush on me

though i didn’t know how to reply

just as i didn’t know how to stay with that sweet

sweet boy

though when i dropped to ninety-five pounds

he put his woolen arms around me

and held me close

trying to keep away the cold

and my father’s cancer

though we never spoke of it

for karen: whose last name i can’t recall

i was afraid she would take my boyfriend away

the one with the wounded looking mouth

pale child’s eyes with starry lashes

like he’d just come out of the bathtub

he wore a white shirt, levi’s and black shoes

wrote me poetry

we went to hear punk bands in dark basements

in the city

stayed in a hotel gray as the mist gray as doves

i was convinced he would fall in love with her

her white blond hair her germanic features

that was before i had discovered my secret

wound the story of a triangle my father loved

my golden mother

my mother loved my father i dark haired

and invisible

so i starved myself as the excuse

and ran away before the boyfriend

with the hurt mouth the star eyes could

and when i returned to berkeley a year later

he was in japan meeting the woman who would later

be his wife

and the blonde?

she was in a class i had and when we shared

our poetry

hers was about a thin girl in cowboy boots

and an antique peach silk slip

that showed the outline of her legs beneath

a girl so much more fragile than the poet herself

who stomped fiercely in black

both of them lost in a land of earthquakes

she was the second person ever to make me poetry

maybe i had it all wrong

maybe i was the one who was supposed to fall

in love with her

and now i can’t even remember her name