I'm going to read you a pretty new poem.
This winter, I was in Manhattan, and I
walked by this drugstore which had a window full of big perfume
bottles.
The kind which presumably one can't really buy,
but that they're supposed to instill in us
this desire for vast quantities of Opium or Poison
or one of those things, Trouble, Longing.
This window, though, was full of perfumes of the '50s, still
there.
They were like Evening in Paris and Jungle Gardenia.
Things that I didn't even know you could buy anymore.
The kind of stuff that people my age will
remember used to be the prizes on the Goodson-Todman game
shows.
You could get, like, a year's supply of, I don't know,
Jungle Gardenia, Taboo.
I got pretty excited about this window.
And I suppose this is a poem about getting
in touch with one's feminine side,
as the pseudo-Jungians would say.
It's called "Crepe de Chine."
"These drugstore windows, one frame in the mile-long film
of lit-up trash and nothing fronting the avenue,
what Balzac called 'the great poem of display.'
Or a tableau of huge bottles of perfume, unbuyable gallons
of scent for women enormous as the movie
screens of my childhood, spiritual pharmaceuticals
in their deco bottles.
Wide-shouldered, flared, arrayed in their pastel skylines,
their chrome-topped tiers, a little Manhattan
of tinted alcohols.
Only reading their names--
Madame Rochas, White Shoulders, Crepe de Chine--
and I'm hearing the suss of immense stockings,
whispery static of chiffon stoles on powdered shoulders,
click of compacts, lisp and soft glide of blush.
And I'm thinking of my wig, my blonde wig.
And following the cold sparkle of pavement,
I'm wanting, not these shoes, but the black clatter
and covenant of heels.
Next door, the Italian bakers hung a canopy
of garlands and silver shot, bee lights and silk ivy,
high over the sugary excess of his pastries.
And I want, not his product, but his display.
I want to wear it.
I want to put the whole big thing on my head.
I want the tumbling coiffures of heaven.
Or, lacking that, a wig tiered and stunning as this island.
That's what I want from the city, to wear it.
That's what drag is, a city to cover our nakedness,
silk boulevards, sleek avenues of organza, the budding
trees along the Avenue flaunting their haze of poisonous
Caravaggio green.
Look how I take the little florist shops
and twist them into something for my hair, forced spiky
branches and a thousand tulips.
Look, my sleety veil of urbane rain descends,
unrolls like cinema's dart and flicker.
My skirt in its ravaged sleekness,
the shadows between buildings, raked and angled
into these startling pleats.
Descending twilight's gabardine over the little parks
and squares circled by taxis, hot jewels,
my body made harmonious with downtown.
Look how I rhyme with the skyscraper's padded sawtooth
shoulders.
Look at the secret evidence of my slip
frothing like the derelict river where the piers used to be.
Look at my demolished silhouette, my gone
and reconstructed profile.
Look at me built and rebuilt, torn down
to make way, excavated, trumped up, tricked out, done, darling,
in every sense of the word.
[LAUGHTER]
[APPLAUSE]
Now, you call me Evening in Paris.
Call me Shalimar.
Call me Crepe de Chine."
[APPLAUSE]
Thank you.
It's, um-- [SIGHS]
[LAUGHTER]
It's subtitled, "Attack of the 40-Foot Drag Queen."
[LAUGHTER]
[SIGHS]
OK.