from PARTS
Mud Luscious Press
I couldn’t be happier for J. A. Tyler, the man who created Mud Luscious (the online journal, the chapbooks, and the full-length press). He made the right decision recently to privilege his own writing moving forward, and it couldn’t be truer that MLP had a great run while it lasted. I’m honored that my verse novel, We Take Me Apart, was the first full-length title he chose for publication, and I’m very moved that this excerpt, “parts,” has a new life again in OmniVerse (“parts” was originally published as an MLP chapbook that shipped as a teaser to subscribers). J. A. Tyler, thank you for everything.
PARTS
I began to produce several dresses a week & in the making of them
not a single flower part was left out because every part has a
function & I believed then in the function of things & how things
could work & become the becoming of another
or at the very least a whole thing that was more than just its parts
for we are more than our parts
we are all of us more than our parts
we are
all of us
more than our parts
the women who wore my dresses knew this
as the parts of their dresses were
petals
that attract & can be scented
I liked to think these women wore their dresses in order to attract
I liked to think of these women strutting city streets & herds of
children following
stigmas
covered in sticky so pollen adheres
I liked to think of these women strolling through fields of
wildflowers & all the wildflowers’ pollen lifting into the air &
attaching like metal shavings to a magnet
styles
raise stigmas from ovaries in order to decrease pollen contamination
I liked to think these women thought they were on the cusp of style
I liked to think of these women sitting crossed-ankled on park
benches thinking of their ovaries
I liked to think of these women thinking of how to decrease the
contamination of their ovaries
ovaries
protect ovules & become fruit upon fertilization
I liked to think of these women growing larger with the growths of
grapes & cherries & apples inside them
anything but citruses
of course
for I had given up citruses
which was new to me then & because it was new to me it was
strange & it is strange to think of how I hated citruses so
passionately for I do not hate them so much now
ovules
that upon fertilization become seeds
like sequins I sewed those ovules to the hems of those women’s
dresses & I liked to think of them shining & glittering as they
undressed before the watching eyes of lovers
receptacles
join flowers to stalks & sometimes become part of the fruit after fertilization
with the receptacles I sewed buttons so that those dresses would
not come undone & leave those women bare without their wanting
to be
stalks
support flowers & with them I made seams & stays
nectaries
are where nectar is held & with them I made hidden pockets
because every woman should have a place to hide her personals
sepals
protect flowers while the flowers develop from buds
I liked to think of these women protected by their dresses as they
felt themselves developing into finer women
filaments
are the stalks of anthers & anthers contain pollen sacs & I like to
think now of these women in the moments of their undressing
fragmentary
ripe for fertilization
Molly Gaudry is the author of the verse novel We Take Me Apart, which was named 2nd finalist for the 2011 Asian American Literary Award for Poetry and shortlisted for the PEN/Joyce Osterweil. She teaches at the Yale Writers’ Conference and is the creative director at The Lit Pub.