![]() Julianne Neely received her MFA degree from the Iowa Writer's Workshop, where she received the Truman Capote Fellowship, the 2017 John Logan Poetry Prize, and a Schupes Fellowship for Poetry. She is currently a Poetics PhD candidate and an English Department Fellow at the University at Buffalo. Her writing has been published in Hyperallergic, VIDA, The Poetry Project, The Rumpus, The Iowa Review and more. WOMAN, IRONING
A man asks me if I have ever seen Picasso’s Woman Ironing. Yes and no, it depends on what you mean, man. I have seen my mother ironing my father’s shirt while he watches TV, no willingness to smile, an unruliness that kicks you in the teeth. Yes, I have seen a friend, a woman’s face through hot steam. I have seen myself growing inside of tree, a root, that’s it. I count them, the women who I have met with polymer fiber materials in their chest. Man, yes, I have seen the painting and no, I have not and did you know, man, that modern doctors suspect Picasso was a sufferer of a disease called Meniere’s and that is where ideas for his paintings came from and leave it to a man to make a billion dollars off of it. I am a woman and yes, I am bitter while I lose my hearing and the room spins, and I tell the neurologist my vision looks like a Picasso painting and he nods because Picasso paintings are so damn famous and mercy never arrives on time to save such grief and I wish I could see straight but moreso I wish I could tell the doctor my vision looks like a Kusama or a Bourgeois or an O’Keefe but no, it looks like a fucking Picasso and so back to you, man, yes, I have seen women ironing and no I have not, but I have seen women give an hour for every minute and I am a woman and I have watched as we have overdrawn a revolution and I have looked in the mirror as if I am not supposed to be there so no, man I have never seen the woman ironing and I never will run alone at night and never forget the sound of men laughing and yes, man, I did see the woman ironing my tongue smooth so I could not scream, and it is the little things I hate about his pictures so small I have nowhere else to store them but my eyes and to hell with men who make art I really mean this go ahead and inhale my saccharine scent and yes, man, of course I have seen the woman ironing of course I have not seen it and if Picasso were here with us, man, in this room I would see nothing but he would see me ironing. How Do You Take Your Coffee, Mr. Armstrong? Twelve men have pressed airy boots on top the pubescent surface of the moon. Forty-six years and twelve men have pressed airy boots on top the pubescent surface of the moon. O irony! O opportunity to construct metaphor of man’s hulk yet ethereal foot traipsing upon the budding face of a womanly moon! Though, one must keep in mind, they say there lives a man in the moon. Who they are I do not know nor care to hear what else they have to say. If Earth’s natural satellite were a man, then surely I would have seen him opening up [jars for lesbian households and wearing] cologne trilling brotherhood. I would have seen the moon breaking things with his mouth. Yet, it is suspect only coming out at night, glaring center attention of a vast sky. Maybe I am seeing it—the man in moon pulling on a cigarette, floating down to a woman walking in the park, twisting his lips with a har har. O Moon Contrite, look at your hands, I wouldn’t eat off them! Perhaps no women have been to the moon because it does not need cleaning yet or because the moon does not want to deal with a bitch on her period or because strawberry daiquiris are not served on the moon or because the moon prefers a man’s firm handshake or maybe the moon just doesn’t want to get married or because [women know nothing about] sports and everyone knows the moon loves a good game of football. One small step for earth, one giant leap for mankind. I wonder what they found on that whaling leap for I wouldn’t know I am still drowning in the deep end of the shallow puddle they jumped. Scientists say more is known about the moon than the deepest parts of ocean. I find this hard to believe. Us women have been bustling across floors of unlit seabed for years bearing pressure on chest until developing gills to breathe and have found something prolific in sinking over flight.
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