Tom Benkendorff

What Do Women Want?

I want a red dress. 

I want it flimsy and cheap, 
I want it too tight, I want to wear it 
until someone tears it off me. 
I want it sleeveless and backless, 
this dress, so no one has to guess 
what's underneath. I want to walk down
the street past Thrifty's and the hardware store 
with all those keys glittering in the window, 
past Mr. and Mrs. Wong selling day-old 
donuts in their café, past the Guerra brothers 
slinging pigs from the truck and onto the dolly, 
hoisting the slick snouts over their shoulders. 
I want to walk like I'm the only 
woman on earth and I can have my pick. 
I want that red dress bad.
I want it to confirm 
your worst fears about me, 
to show you how little I care about you 
or anything except what 
I want. When I find it, I'll pull that garment 
from its hanger like I'm choosing a body 
to carry me into this world, through 
the birth-cries and the love-cries too, 
and I'll wear it like bones, like skin, 
it'll be the goddamned 
dress they bury me in.

Kim Addonizio

Kim Addonizio was born in Washington, D.C., in 1954. She received her B.A. and M.A. from San Francisco State University.

Her books of poetry include Lucifer at the Starlite (W. W. Norton, 2009), Tell Me (BOA Editions, 2000), which was a finalist for the National Book Award;Jimmy & Rita (1997); The Philosopher's Club (1994); and Three West Coast Women, with Laurie Duesing and Dorianne Laux (1987).

Addonizio is also the author of In the Box Called Pleasure (1999), a collection of stories, and, with Dorianne Laux, the co-author ofThe Poet's Companion: A Guide to the Pleasures of Writing Poetry(1997). She co-edited Dorothy Parker's Elbow: Tattoos on Writers, Writers on Tattoos (2002) with Cheryl Dumesnil. Addonizio was a founding editor of the journal Five Fingers Review.

Among her awards and honors are fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, a Pushcart Prize, and a Commonwealth Club Poetry Medal. Kim Addonizio teaches in the M.F.A. program at Goddard College and lives in San Francisco. (Source:Poets.org)