COLD WAR
Outside, the crew dresses
a Baltimore street-
tail-finned Chevys, parking meters made over.
Housewives in hats and pearls adjust gloves
on their way to a church long razed.
The camera sees 1952.
Lining my street-side trailer,
rows of pencil skirts and bullet bras,
knee-length crinolines, satin bed jackets.
I'm costumed down to the crotch.
My first nude scene and this 21st century carpet
doesn't match their ʾ50s décor.
Bikini waxes don't jibe
with Cold War yonis, Honey,
my dresser winks.
She has a triangle of curls
in her palm. She tells me
it's called a merkin.
Her fingers press
my pubic bone,
glue the hair in place,
as if I have to play this role
down to the follicles
to reach the red carpet.
I'm going to knit myself a merkin-
atomic orange, hotter than the glue my dresser heats
to attach this wig.
When they say, "Rolling,"
I'll roll down my boxy briefs
and unveil a vulva
so ahead of its time, the whole crew
will duck and cover from the heat
I'm radiating.
FRINGE
After The Great Wall of Vagina, Jamie McCartney
Studio Open House
We get the joke-
pussy as a wonder of the world-
so we bustle into the crowded gallery
to view four hundred plaster vulvas
set in frames.
Bald light, shadows on an upended landscape,
spread like snow across the walls.
Is it art or architecture? A box of sex,
deserted, save for finger-pointing tourists,
curious types. Here and there
an art lover.
The Installation
The one whose lips curve back like gingko leaves.
A cast of gentle folds, a silky gown.
Eighteen-year-olds, identical twins.
The oldest-over seventy.
Transgendered.
Pierced.
A labiaplasty, before and after she had surgery.
A swell of hills.
A curtain nearly closed.
Artist's Statement
To impose geometry, I placed solid frames
around the undulating curves.
When visitors enter, the wall is somewhat distant.
They see white texture only,
abstracting notions of pornography.
Close up, women find
the variety of shapes is comforting.
What I Learned
The early castings felt like clumsy sex.
I was afraid that I would mess it up.
Models confessed, they hated how their vulvas looked-
too beaky, lippy, knotted like a tree.
I was in a unique position to change their minds,
Full of nerves, I pulled the blue gloves on,
spread the alginate out with my thumbs.
You Have One Unmoderated Comment
God knows why I signed up,
blame a low ebb.
The sculptor told me,
as my mold was setting,
he bedded most models.
I nodded but refused
to take the hint.
Episiotomy: the mold reveals
my torso's bowl is scarred
from rim to rim.
I stitched her up real tight,
the doctor said to my husband,
as if I were not there.
Artist's Method
He stands beside the table,
spreads their knees,
eases them with jokes,
"No stirrups here!"
adjusts their bodies.
"Slide down, Love,
so I don't have to reach."
He slops on alginate,
blue goop dentists use
for molds of teeth.
Messy, yes, but
it sets up quick.
When it's dry,
he peels the mold back.
Same line, every time:
"It's a girl," he shticks.
Visit the Studio Shop on Your Way Out
Five years of casting, the hundred best
are featured in this book. Magnets, note cards,
mugs with forty vulvas winking like cats' eyes.
A video loops at the register:
the moment a model sees her mold-
curved blue shell, cloudy as sky-
so neat and small, she cancels surgery.
In the Future
A van heads north to London,
white paint nearly covers: "Plumbing Pro."
Shelved in back, four hundred sculpted vulvas,
frameless, packaged, museum-ready.
Is it a dead cat in the road,
chunk of molded rubber,
or a blown out tire that makes the van bump?
The sculptures (small enough to fit your palm)
leap off their metal shelves, shatter.
The van goes. In the back,
torsos begin to form, sprout arms and legs.
Plaster fingers work open the double doors.
One woman jumps, heads to work
to make herself a spreadsheet dress.
Others walk home in clouds of chalky dust.
To Their Lovers, They Say
You visited the gallery
but could not pick me out.
I was a brick, colorless,
one square block of an abandoned city
laid out for tourists.
It was not me on the wall-
birds come to my city,
gingkoes spread their leaves
along the busy swirl of roads-
not me at all.
FUTUROTIC
She was born a balloon
Plastic girl with her skin unblemished.
Plastic girl with realistic horsehair wig.
Plastic girl with her mouth a permanent O.
her futurotic vagina where a belly button should be
Plastic girl with her footless legs ending in their points.
Plastic girl with her legs shot out like a school compass,
can't measure anything, not angles, not inches.
Plastic girl who can't stand on her compass legs.
where she might have been attached to her mother
Plastic girl with her eyes outlined black, fixed on the ceiling.
Plastic girl who can't see the ceiling is made of glass.
Plastic girl who never shuts her eyes.
by a long rubber umbilicus.
Plastic girl who doesn't need a wonder bra.
Plastic girl who only needs a little air to unsag them titties.
Plastic girl who has never been entered by tampon or speculum.
It is her mother who thinks to fill her
Her lips forever latex pink.
Her nail polish without chips or peels.
Her vibrating sucking jelly mouth with rotating tongue action.
with helium, so she can rise and rise
Her hairless crotch you can't really call a pussy.
Her air pump and repair kit.
Her slow escape of breath.
one naked girl against the blue sky, looking down at us
Her bubblegum mouth saying O.
