First thing to remember is that Mercury is retrograde. Communication will be haywire until the end of May, ’tis said.

We can look at Mercury retrograde as an opportunity for introspection and reflection-before-speaking, also as a catalyst for outbursts of truthtelling. We can also allow it to play havoc with our lives. Just remember, back up your data, and be ready to deal with the fallout of countless misunderstandings.

Now, to Nick’s comment that women bloggers write more about sex than poetry or poetics. I’m not bristling at this comment, but I think it’s funny, sort of that old “animalization” of women vs. the “cerebralization” of men. I don’t always have a problem with this kind of essentialism ; sometimes it suits my arguments — but in the case of womyn bloggers, I simply don’t think it’s accurate. If I think back on the topics I have posted on, I can think of very few instances where I explicitly wrote about sex. I posted one funny fake sex fantasy. I wrote about my memories of a hippie girlhood and specula. I may have sexualized my cats a little in a poem about them, i.e. “One of my first sexual experiences was with a kitten.” But in the main, although I have written on “feminized” topics like adornment, ornament, long hair, etc., I think I have written more about war, pain, and despair, and the tiny lovely absurd or hilarious experiences that permit me to move through war, pain, and despair. I have also written about poetry and poetics, though not as much as when I first started, mainly because I have no time. I have about eleven minutes to write this before I must leave the house to go to Hunter to find out the almost certainly negative results of a tuberculosis test I was compelled by the Dept. of Health to take because one of my students had TB.

Of course I think that language oozes sex no matter what the topic, but that’s perhaps my own bias, as in a bias-cut satin gown that barely hides the pubic mound of a cabaret singer…

I certainly have no problem writing about sex, a fact to which Swoon, not to mention all of my other books, attests. You’d think, actually, that ‘d be writing about sex much more on this blog than I actually do.

So… sex… you want it? You KNOW you want it…

mmmmmmmm

The mussels and their lips, the greeny membranes,

the flat apricot clams.

Moistly fluttering up to the explosion of oh!!! feathers falling in twitchy heavings on my purple stockings, sweet with crotch musk aching in blossoms.

His lips that licking my folded claspings send up through the nerves puffs of melody from my painted mouth.

Oily nipple, thrill of entry. Contacting tongues to activate the hearts, dual dumbeks (sp?) in the craving room.

etc. etc. I mean I could go on and on like this. But I’m getting turned on and I have to go to work. (work vs. eros. Quel drag!)

p.s. James said something about “mere mental masturbation”, not in reference to Swoon exactly, but agreeing with something Gary had written there. You know, what’s the big issue with masturbation? Thinking back to Jism Jim. Don’t understand.

Anyway, whenever I hear the word “mere” I reach for my vibrator. How I do love the trivial!

And whenever I hear yet another convolution of “whenever I hear the word …. I reach for my ….” I want to screaaaaaaaammmm!

“Under clothes/ the vaginal cave/ as if that’s some sort of/ big deal…”