#helen of troy does countertop dancing

[apoemaday]

Helen of Troy Does Countertop Dancing

by Margaret Atwood

The world is full of women who’d tell me I should be ashamed of myself if they had the chance. Quit dancing. Get some self-respect and a day job. Right. And minimum wage, and varicose veins, just standing in one place for eight hours behind a glass counter bundled up to the neck, instead of naked as a meat sandwich. Selling gloves, or something. Instead of what I do sell. You have to have talent to peddle a thing so nebulous and without material form. Exploited, they’d say. Yes, any way you cut it, but I’ve a choice of how, and I’ll take the money. I do give value. Like preachers, I sell vision, like perfume ads, desire or its facsimile. Like jokes or war, it’s all in the timing. I sell men back their worse suspicions: that everything’s for sale, and piecemeal. They gaze at me and see a chain-saw murder just before it happens, when thigh, ass, inkblot, crevice, tit, and nipple are still connected. Such hatred leaps in them, my beery worshipers! That, or a bleary hopeless love. Seeing the rows of heads and upturned eyes, imploring but ready to snap at my ankles, I understand floods and earthquakes, and the urge to step on ants. I keep the beat, and dance for them because they can’t. The music smells like foxes, crisp as heated metal searing the nostrils or humid as August, hazy and languorous as a looted city the day after, when all the rape’s been done already, and the killing, and the survivors wander around looking for garbage to eat, and there’s only a bleak exhaustion. Speaking of which, it’s the smiling tires me out the most. This, and the pretence that I can’t hear them. And I can’t, because I’m after all a foreigner to them. The speech here is all warty gutturals, obvious as a slab of ham, but I come from the province of the gods where meanings are lilting and oblique. I don’t let on to everyone, but lean close, and I’ll whisper: My mother was raped by a holy swan. You believe that? You can take me out to dinner. That’s what we tell all the husbands. There sure are a lot of dangerous birds around. Not that anyone here but you would understand. The rest of them would like to watch me and feel nothing. Reduce me to components as in a clock factory or abattoir. Crush out the mystery. Wall me up alive in my own body. They’d like to see through me, but nothing is more opaque than absolute transparency. Look–my feet don’t hit the marble! Like breath or a balloon, I’m rising, I hover six inches in the air in my blazing swan-egg of light. You think I’m not a goddess? Try me. This is a torch song. Touch me and you’ll burn. 

[mypinkblog]

Margaret Atwood, "Elena di Troia balla sul bancone" / Auguste Rodin, "L'éternelle idole"

[llovelymoonn]

if you burn me i shall rise from the ashes

margaret atwood helen of troy does countertop dancing (via @flowerytale) \\ igor skaletsky redhead girl with burning dog \\ rainer maria rilke rilke on love and other difficulties (via @weltenwellen) \\ shakespeare henry viii \\ portrait of a lady on fire (dir. céline sciamma) \\ mitski a burning hill \\ christian bahr when two worlds collide \\ magnificent century episode 99 (via @araekni)

kofi

[typewriter-worries]

Helen of Troy Does Countertop Dancing, Margaret Atwood

[ Text ID: This is a torch song. Touch me and you’ll burn. ] 

[words-and-coffee]

They’d like to see through me, but nothing is more opaque than absolute transparency.

Margaret Atwood, Morning in the Burned House: Helen of Troy Does Countertop Dancing

[melifluuslove]

Helen of Troy Does Countertop Dancing - Margaret Atwood

[moonstoast]

—female rage

? // medusa by caravaggio // gregory radionov // artemisia gentileschi // monstrous flesh: on women’s bodies in horror by rebecca harknis-cross // carrie (1976) // corruption by camille norton // midsommar (2019) // helen of troy does countertop dancing by margaret atwood // medusa in her throne by reza sedhi

[april-is]

April 5, 2024: May 5, 2020, John Okrent

May 5, 2020 John Okrent

It is beautiful to be glad to see a person every time you see them, as I was to see Juan, the maintenance man, with whom it was always the same brotherly greeting—each of us thumping a fist over his heart and grinning, as though we shared a joke, or bread. I barely knew him. Evenings in clinic, me finishing my work, him beginning his— fluorescence softening in the early dark. He wasn't even fifty, had four grandchildren, fixed what was broken, cleaned for us, caught the virus, and died on his couch last weekend. And what right have I to write this poem, who will not see him in his uniform of ashes, only remember him, in his Seahawks cap, and far from sick, locking up after me, turning up his music.

--

More like this:

Say Thank You Say I’m Sorry, Jericho Brown

When people say, “we have made it through worse before”, Clint Smith

Today in:

2023: Homeric Hymn, A.E. Stallings 2022: The Mower, Philip Larkin 2021: When people say, “we have made it through worse before”, Clint Smith 2020: Untitled, James Baldwin 2019: To Yahweh, Tina Kelley 2018: from how many of us have them?, Danez Smith 2017: Sad Dictionary, Richard Siken 2016: Lucia, Ravi Shankar 2015: Overjoyed, Ada Limón 2014: Helen of Troy Does Countertop Dancing, Margaret Atwood 2013: Anniversary, Cecilia Woloch 2012: Poem for Jack Spicer, Matthew Zapruder 2011: Now comes the long blue cold, Mary Oliver 2010: Jackie Robinson, Lucille Clifton 2009: In the Nursing Home, Jane Kenyon 2008: To the Couple Lingering on the Doorstep, Deborah Landau 2007: White Apples, Donald Hall 2006: Late Confession, Gary Soto 2005: Steps, Frank O’Hara

[texaschainsawmascara]

She stands before him, clothes in garments of flaming fire, inspiring terror & making body & soul terrible, full of frightening eyes (…) - The Book of Lilith - Barbara Black Koltuv

Delta Of Venus - Anaïs Nin / Helen of Troy Does Countertop Dancing - Margaret Atwood / 'Fire No 1', 2013 - Logan White / The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Volume IV (1944-1947) / Fantasia / Old Me - 5 Seconds of Summer / not angry - Ikumi Nakada / Labyrinths: Selected Stories & Other Writings - Jorge Luis Borges / Candle 2000 - Vladimir Kush / Angel On Fire - Halsey / unknown / A Burning Hill - Mitski / Liability - Lorde

[sorrydetka]

the last of us, ‘when we are in need’ 1.08 // in the pines by alice notley // helen of troy does countertop dancing by margaret atwood

[camcorderrevival]

- helen of troy does countertop dancing, margaret atwood

[opalsiren]

“terrible if one of you were to get, oh, i don’t know, scalded.”

h2o: just add water (2006-2010), 1x09 ‘dangerous waters’ / margaret atwood, ‘helen of troy does countertop dancing’

[colubrina]

I am respectfully asking for poetry recommendations, similar to the "What do Women Want?" which you mentioned in Housemates. I can't move on from it. Something deeply woman and painful and beautiful maybe?

Try this one: https://poets.org/poem/helen-troy-does-countertop-dancing

You think I'm not a goddess? Try me. This is a torch song. Touch me and you'll burn.

[musingsforthestars]

You think I'm not a goddess? Try me. This is a torch song. Touch me and you'll burn.

Margaret Atwood, Helen of Troy Does Countertop Dancing

[typewriter-worries]

Helen of Troy Does Countertop Dancing, Margaret Atwood

[ Text ID: You think I’m not a goddess? / Try me. ] 

[words-and-coffee]

You think I’m not a goddess? Try me. This is a torch song. Touch me and you’ll burn.

Margaret Atwood, Morning in the Burned House: Helen of Troy Does Countertop Dancing