WEBVTT

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I'm going to read you
a pretty new poem.

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This winter, I was
in Manhattan, and I

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walked by this drugstore which
had a window full of big perfume

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bottles.

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The kind which presumably
one can't really buy,

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but that they're
supposed to instill in us

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this desire for vast
quantities of Opium or Poison

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or one of those things,
Trouble, Longing.

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This window, though, was full
of perfumes of the '50s, still

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there.

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They were like Evening in
Paris and Jungle Gardenia.

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Things that I didn't even
know you could buy anymore.

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The kind of stuff that
people my age will

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remember used to be the prizes
on the Goodson-Todman game

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shows.

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You could get, like, a year's
supply of, I don't know,

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Jungle Gardenia, Taboo.

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I got pretty excited
about this window.

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And I suppose this is
a poem about getting

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in touch with one's
feminine side,

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as the pseudo-Jungians
would say.

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It's called "Crepe de Chine."

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"These drugstore windows, one
frame in the mile-long film

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of lit-up trash and nothing
fronting the avenue,

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what Balzac called 'the
great poem of display.'

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Or a tableau of huge bottles
of perfume, unbuyable gallons

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of scent for women
enormous as the movie

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screens of my childhood,
spiritual pharmaceuticals

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in their deco bottles.

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Wide-shouldered, flared, arrayed
in their pastel skylines,

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their chrome-topped
tiers, a little Manhattan

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of tinted alcohols.

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Only reading their names--

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Madame Rochas, White
Shoulders, Crepe de Chine--

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and I'm hearing the suss
of immense stockings,

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whispery static of chiffon
stoles on powdered shoulders,

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click of compacts, lisp
and soft glide of blush.

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And I'm thinking of
my wig, my blonde wig.

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And following the cold
sparkle of pavement,

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I'm wanting, not these
shoes, but the black clatter

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and covenant of heels.

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Next door, the Italian
bakers hung a canopy

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of garlands and silver shot,
bee lights and silk ivy,

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high over the sugary
excess of his pastries.

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And I want, not his
product, but his display.

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I want to wear it.

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I want to put the whole
big thing on my head.

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I want the tumbling
coiffures of heaven.

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Or, lacking that, a wig tiered
and stunning as this island.

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That's what I want from
the city, to wear it.

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That's what drag is, a city
to cover our nakedness,

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silk boulevards, sleek avenues
of organza, the budding

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trees along the Avenue flaunting
their haze of poisonous

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Caravaggio green.

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Look how I take the
little florist shops

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and twist them into something
for my hair, forced spiky

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branches and a thousand tulips.

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Look, my sleety veil of
urbane rain descends,

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unrolls like cinema's
dart and flicker.

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My skirt in its
ravaged sleekness,

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the shadows between
buildings, raked and angled

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into these startling pleats.

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Descending twilight's
gabardine over the little parks

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and squares circled
by taxis, hot jewels,

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my body made harmonious
with downtown.

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Look how I rhyme with the
skyscraper's padded sawtooth

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shoulders.

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Look at the secret
evidence of my slip

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frothing like the derelict river
where the piers used to be.

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Look at my demolished
silhouette, my gone

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and reconstructed profile.

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Look at me built and
rebuilt, torn down

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to make way, excavated, trumped
up, tricked out, done, darling,

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in every sense of the word.

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[LAUGHTER]

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[APPLAUSE]

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Now, you call me
Evening in Paris.

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Call me Shalimar.

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Call me Crepe de Chine."

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[APPLAUSE]

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Thank you.

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It's, um-- [SIGHS]

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[LAUGHTER]

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It's subtitled, "Attack of
the 40-Foot Drag Queen."

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[LAUGHTER]

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[SIGHS]

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OK.

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