Julia Roth | Lessons From My Menstrual Cup

There’s an episode of Friends where Chandler unwittingly attends a one woman show that opens with the actress yelling why don’t you like me? and then chapter one: my first period. Then the laugh track plays, because the boom of this woman’s voice, her Eiffel Tower stance and relentless anatomy are all parts of the punch line. It’s funny because no one wants to listen

to a one woman show

where I clumsily empty

a swollen thimbleful of my DNA into the toilet

& say a little prayer to the silicone tulip

suspended inside me

catching the physicality

of my unmaking & how it shocked me

the first time it unfolded into

my fickle origami of flesh

because I felt

nothing & wanted to laugh there in the shower

thinking isn’t that just like my body

the most

disputed land of my body

to whisper fuck

you one day you’ll realize all the things

I can hide

all the things I can carry

but for now I am trapped within the

discography of the sane

singing the gospel

of the douche down Walgreens’s

armory aisles of

Vagisil & more

discreet Summers Eve because I am

a host for smells

I can’t control

but am ultimately held accountable for &

times like these I can’t help

thinking about when

I overheard a man

say to his friend she must’ve been drinking

beer because her

pussy tasted sour & we

meaning my sisterhood of ancestors

have been here constantly

emptying ourselves or preparing to

empty ourselves

trying to explain

to you what it’s like to watch

what you are made of slither

down the drain

like oil &

know you have lived

another unrewindable

month with so much

& so little

control over what’s

inside you

The Last Scraps of Cape Town

I went to a winery with the best bathroom in the world. Opposite the toilet, an entire wall of glass framed a hill quilted with autumn-honeyed grapevines. So quiet I held my breath while I peed.

I needed a gate code and three skeleton keys to unlock my apartment. To sleep I needed two blankets, a fleece jacket, a hat. I bought electricity at the grocery store to feed my apartment’s hungry circuits. I shut myself in an armoire once when I felt alone.

I watched a bunch of poached eggs float around and around like jellyfish before being scooped onto a bed of hash browns and smoked salmon for a couple bucks a plate.

The neighborhood bars looked like vigils with so many lit candles. When the power went out, conversations flickered and chins tilted up. Placing bets on the length of darkness. A friend leaned across the table to listen and her hair caught fire. I am embarrassed, now, to remember this when I forget so much else.

I skipped work because there was no hot water to shower. I wasn’t unclean, I was just afraid of the train and the cold and meaninglessness.

I was afraid of the train held together with stickers screaming HEALER DEON: MONEY IN ACCOUNT, BRING BACK LOST LOVER, PENIS ENLARGEMENT and DR. GRACE SAFE ABORTION.

There was one of those bright red tour buses where you could hear them talking over a loudspeaker from the sidewalk. You could buy tickets to ride it around a Real Live Township and gawk at the scrap metal houses and the people who live inside them. Not a secret or anything.

I went to a market/an aquarium/a café. I climbed a mountain with a lake/a cave/a cloud right on top. It almost seemed like I could understand a place from above. Something about planting flags/ownership/altitude deluding you. It was such that, for a moment, I thought I deserved understanding.

Rick Deckard Fucks Rachael the Replicant

It begins with Rachael trying to run

Rick chasing

slamming the door

shut with a closed fist

locked arm

shoving Rachael back

into the apartment

clattering her against

the film noir blinds

In the script this is all reduced to

[a little rough-housin’]

Dick is kind enough

to give Rachael instructions: say kiss me

After all—she’s a programmable thing

And I’ll never know the end of the sentence

she begins with I can’t rely on . . .

because Dick cuts her off, demanding she say it,

say kiss me

with him coding her desire, she complies, says

kiss me

but he’s unconvinced, needs her

to say more, say I want you

And maybe she thinks she does

or maybe Dick is a convincing teleprompter

or maybe she’s programmed with an alternate

definition of want, but either way she repeats

I want you

And he commands—

again

And I know how she feels when she recites,

from some distant index of sexuality,

I want you. Put your hands on me,

playing repeat after me instead of breaking

the arm that’s slamming the door shut.

Julia Roth was raised in suburban Massachusetts, attended college at the University of Central Florida, and continued her zig-zag across the United States when she began the MFA program at Western Michigan University. Her most recent accomplishment is learning to ride a bicycle. She currently resides in Kalamazoo, Michigan, which truly exists.