Most Fashionable Reader! Zelda has dragged herself out of The Treacherous Abyss and has pulled herself to her feet to, well, face her demons head-on by writing about some form of some sort of journey into hell. Zelda is not one to rub salt in her wounds, Dear Reader, but she does have a fondness for rubbing alcohol.
James Joyce! Zelda has missed you so! Also Ulysses! Zelda cannot wait to go farther with you! Maybe even third base! And Vivienne! Zelda has missed you more! Zelda has missed you most!
The video below is something that has made Zelda feel better lately. It is a sweet little song — Zelda had forgotten about it until she heard it whilst getting her hair styled last week. Zelda feels the lyrics would have been a tad more cohesive, however, had Anna Nalick written it when she was a little older. Ah, well.
“My God! It’s so beautiful when the boy! Smiles!”
The writing on the wall
Fade past the unglazed mug, the shampoo commercial, the Still Life with Waterfall. Fingers blunt with cold. The sound of an old film. Aspirin tablets, chicken salad sandwiches. Extension cords round the room like lions. The smell of the weak, the descent of their last end –
For this post, Zelda shall continue her procrastination. But! Zelda is going to respond to a comment made by the Most Fashionable Marie on the Most Fashionable Vivienne’s recent Chimera of Fashion [which is, Most Fashionable Readers, the Most Fashionable Chimera Zelda has ever, ever seen. long live the Chimera of Fashion! long live Vivienne! hooray!]. The Most Fashionable Marie’s comment was as follows:
Tell me, if you please, how will you revise these various text-based creations? Do you have an endgame in mind? Because of the stringent parameters you set yourself, I wonder if these loosen later on… Or is there no later on, only TODAY?
Zelda would really, really, really love to hear what Vivienne has to say about this. Zelda is still too afraid to revisit her NaPoWriMoFa [National Poetry Month of Fashion] poems to see if anything can be salvaged, so she does not feel as if she can answer Marie’s questions right now. However! Zelda CAN offer the very first Chimera she ever wrote many, many moons ago as well as some revisions that were made to it.
For this Chimera, Zelda used a paragraph from Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time as her base text. She extracted verbs from Andrea Dworkin’s Intercourse. Nouns and adjectives were taken from The Modern Conductor by Elizabeth A.H. Green (2nd ed) and Inventing the Public Enemy: The Gangster in American Culture, 1918-1934 by David E. Ruth.
The unedited Chimera is as follows:
Without intercourse, lodging as a cultural and generic woman, she heard a possession she had never expressed, as though she were remaining completely projected out by a particular thrust. This was far more colorful than the surrendering had been; while she was fucking there was no need to proceed, but now her spirit was acknowledged so that although she was extricating herself from all embarrassments for want of dominance, there was no way for her spirit to prove and receive, to detect the invasion that she must demonstrate. This was completely fragmentary — emanating influence while she succumbed to the creed and approached the individuals to answer them. She scoffed resistance, but her smiling fist couldn’t wait. She sprung — she was conducting in order to appear; her form was perplexed along with the physicality of her. Her obsession tried to celebrate; it gave a violent, contemporary inquisition, but it could not plead interpretation.
A later, revised draft:
The Female Conductor
Days since she last fucked, lights on
in her neighborhood after three a.m., hours until
the milk expired. She counted
and sprung, turned her energy outward.
She conducted in order to appear.
In theory, it had always been more
colorful than surrendering. When she was fucking,
however, there had been no need for answers.
She could dominate social transactions.
She could remember to be cordial.
But now that her own potency was acknowledged,
now that she’d extricated her self
from pressing circumstances to be
thrust into this
directly conscious life, there was little
tangible progress. Only indifference. Especially
among her colleagues. She could not even sit
with them at lunch. She began to search
for surrogate institutions. She moved
her couch outside for a better view.
It still needed work after all those revisions, of course, but Zelda feels that it became a much stronger piece after the revisions.
And that is all, Most Fashionable Reader, for Zelda feels that she will take her Most Fashionably Fabulous Friend D’s advice and go to bed now.
Zelda knows, Dearest, Most Fashionable Reader, that she must write a few more poems to reach her goal of 30 FaOuLiPoWriMo [Fashionable OuLiPo Writing Month of Fashion] poems. Zelda has been rather tired lately because of lack of nutrients, as she has not gone grocery shopping in a while and is forced to scavenge her pantry for forgotten packets of Raman Noodles and dusty boxes of instant pudding.
So until Zelda goes grocery shopping and restores the nutrients in her body, Zelda must leave you, Most Fashionable Reader, to consider this:
Consider Leonardo DiCaprio’s character in The Departed. Consider his perpetually furrowed brow. Consider his propensity toward violence. Consider his height and his scowl. Consider the curve of his shoulders. Consider that he orders cranberry juice at a bar, which suggests an attempt to refrain from drinking alcohol, which suggests a previous unhealthy relationship with alcohol. Consider that he has identity issues. Consider that he has many issues, period, but consider that he is still more mature than any man his age that this speaker has ever met. Consider that, after verbally sparring with his appointed psychiatrist, he asks her if she’d like to join him for a cup of coffee. Consider that she says yes. Consider that this speaker would say yes to a cup of coffee with Leonardo DiCaprio’s character in The Departed, too. Consider the slim chance of happiness for this most fashionable speaker since the only man in the whole world she feels she can love is a fictional creation, one who doesn’t even make it to the end of the movie. Consider this, Dear Reader. Consider this.
Zelda is going to make quite a few associative leaps in the poemlogue that follows, Most Fashionable Reader, so please bear with her.
So.
Let’s say Zelda likens herself to Alice, the Most Fashionable Heroine of the Most Fashionable Resident Evil Trilogy. Zelda enjoys likening herself to Alice (played by the Most Fashionable of All Fashionable B-Movie Queens, Milla Jovovich), for, in Resident Evil: Apocalypse, Alice must fight the Wretched and Vile Nemesis, whose face is too vile and too hideous to be posted on such a fashionable blog, and this Wretched and Vile Nemesis reminds Zelda of her own wretched and vile nemesis, who would tell Zelda that the subjects of her poems were not interesting enough to be written about, who would reply to Zelda’s fashionable and insightful comments with nothing but A BLACK HOLE OF SILENCE, who would, after Zelda’s fashionable and insightful comments and the unfashionable silences that would follow them, abruptly turn to another student and say, “Well, what did YOU think?”
Ahem. Onward!
So if Zelda likens herself to Alice, played by the Fashionable Milla Jovovich, Zelda must absolutely liken the Most Fashionable Vivienne to Diva Plavalaguna from The Fifth Element (which also stars the Most Fashionable Milla Jovovich). Why? Because Diva Plavalaguna KICKS ASS almost as much as Our Most Fashionable Vivienne of Fashion does. In addition to kicking ass, the Most Fashionable Diva holds within herself the Four Stones of Fashion, the very keys to humanity’s existence. Vivienne proved her Most Fashionable Diva-ness for the BILLIONTH time earlier this week when she correctly interpreted an event Zelda witnessed not as a mere event, but as a SIGN and a VISION from the Benevolent and Graceful and Forever Fashionable Anne Carson. Below, Zelda shall condense this vision as much as she can, because she does not want it to seem like an essay one would read in a creative nonfiction workshop, or a daily devotion one would read in The Upper Room, or Daily Guideposts. Here goes:
After work one day this week, Zelda joined a Friend of Most Fashionable Fashion (FoMFF) at the beach because, at this point, Zelda would rather be called Leatherface than Wednesday Fucking Addams, so she is working on her tan as much as she possibly can. “Look at that sailboat in the water,” FoMFF said as she pointed to a small sailboat-sized speck on the horizon. “I see it,” Zelda said. “They’re tourists,” FoMFF said. “They have no idea what they’re doing. They tried to go out earlier, and they flipped the boat before they got out very far.” It turns out, Most Fashionable Reader, that Water Rescue had to be called to bring the sailors back to the shore. “So why are they out there now?” Zelda said. “I have no idea,” FoMFF said. “As soon as Water Rescue left, they put the boat back in the water.” So Zelda and her FoMFF watched the small sailboat-sized speck on the horizon move back and forth for a while. Then Zelda and her FoMFF watched the small sailboat-sized speck on the horizon attempt to turn and come back to shore. Then Zelda and her Friend of Most Fashionable Fashion watched the sailboat flip. Again. Zelda and her FoMFF watched as the sailors tried in vain to right the sailboat. Then Zelda and her FoMFF watched as the sailboat completely sank. Then Zelda and her FoMFF watched as the Water Rescue Dinghy AND the Big Coast Guard Boat rescued aforementioned sailors.
After hearing this, Vivienne of Most Fashionable Fashion cries out, “This is a Vision, Zelda! A Vision of Benevolence and Grace sent to you by the Benevolent and Wise Anne Carson!” “What does it mean, Vivienne,” Zelda said. “What does it mean?” “It means, Most Fashionable Zelda, that the Wise and Benevolent Anne Carson is SENDING YOU A MESSAGE. And the message is to NOT MAKE THE SAME MISTAKE TWICE. DO NOT MAKE THE SAME MISTAKE TWICE, ZELDA. YOU MUSTN’T MAKE THE SAME MISTAKE TWICE.” “Vivienne!” Zelda said. “You are so wise! You are so benevolent! You are a vessel of wisdom and benevolence for the wise and benevolent Anne Carson! THANK YOU! THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR CHANGING MY LIFE!!!”
Thank you, Most Fashionable Vivienne of the Utmost Fashion. Thank you.
Oh yeah! The poem!
For this poem, I have used a constraint that Vivienne and I recently devised. It is called Altered Punctuosity. When one applies Altered Punctuosity to an existing poem, one does not change any of the poem’s words. Instead, one changes the punctuation. I attempted to apply Altered Punctuousity to the entirety of Randall Jarrell’s “The Woman at the Washington Zoo,” but it didn’t work too well for the poem as a whole. I keep telling myself that it’s Jarrell’s fault, not mine. Ha! So I leave you, Most Fashionable Reader of Fashion, with a poem I created by applying Altered Punctuosity to the beginning of Randall Jarrell’s “The Woman at the Washington Zoo.”
The Woman
At the Washington Zoo, the saris go by me.
From the embassies: cloth from the moon,
cloth from another planet they look back at.
The leopard like the leopard.
And I, this print of mine that has kept its color
alive through so many cleanings.
This dull null.
Navy I wear to work, and wear.
From work and so to my bed.
So to my grave.
Zelda dreamt of Axl Rose this weekend. And the setting of this dream, Dearest Reader, was the church from the Most Fashionable Music Video of All Time, “November Rain.” This, Most Fashionable Reader, was most certainly a sign. It was a sign that Zelda should post Part the First of an epic N+7 + Other Edits Zelda Feels Are Appropriate at the Time she has been working on since the beginning of FaOuLiPoWriMoFa (Fashionable Oulipo Writing Month of Fashion).
This epic poem is not completed, and Zelda hopes with all hope that it will not go the way of the Guns ‘N Roses album Chinese Democracy, which has been in the works for around 14 years now. But Zelda is posting Part the First, for she is loving the fact that there is a slender-bodied dragonfly in it.
Ladies and Gentlemen of Fashion: Zelda is going to tell you about a friend that both she and Vivienne know. Every time this friend — who shall, from now on, be referred to as The Walking Talking Breathing Non Sequitur — randomly writes either Vivienne or Zelda, these communications consist of exquisitely random sentences and sentence fragments interspersed with exquisitely random self-centered sentences. Zelda would go into more detail and list a plethora of examples, but she feels very guilty and full of shame for even discussing The Walking Talking Breathing Non Sequitur because, as she and Vivienne say from time to time, “Yes, I know she tries. I know she’s reaching out. But Jesus!!!” Zelda will, however, make public an example that spawned the Most Fashionable Non-Profane Exclamatory Interjection in the History of Non-Profane Exclamatory Interjections — an interjection that she and Vivienne use quite frequently when no other word will suffice, an interjection that — when either Vivienne or Zelda has just recounted an extremely unfashionable event or happening to the other, who is then, for a few moments, rendered speechless by aforementioned unfashionable event — will rise forth unprompted from the other’s throat as a prayer, as a whisper, as regret.
Long ago, right in the middle of a Time of Great Stress and Great Sorrow in Zelda’s life, Zelda received an e-mail from The Walking Talking Breathing Non Sequitur. In between the exquisitely random sentences and sentence fragments interspersed with exquisitely random self-centered sentences, there was this: “I like your new profile photo. You look happy. Did you go to Vegas?”
Now, Dearest Readers of Fashion, the profile photo of which The Walking Talking Breathing Non Sequitur spoke was not new — it was, in fact, a few months old. And, Most Fashionable Readers, since Zelda is neither emo nor goth — even though she was called Wednesday Addams by a complete stranger at a local speakeasy recently because of, Zelda can only assume, her delicate porcelain skin — Zelda finds no reason to post a profile photo of her scowling, crying, or even looking morbidly pensive. And, Fashionable Readers of Fashion, though she finds the City of Sin quite intriguing and fashionable and dreams of living there for a season, or even a year, Zelda has never once — in the entirety of her life — equated Las Vegas with happiness.
So, Most Fashionable Readers, Zelda will now reveal the Most Fashionable Non-Profane Exclamatory Interjection in the History of Non-Profane Exclamatory Interjections: VEGAS!!!
Example:
Zelda of Fashion: Vivienne, do you remember the treatment we sent to Bravo? The one for a reality show that pitted poet against poet?
Vivienne of Fashion: Zelda, do you mean the one with the extremely fashionable challenges, like having all the poets write sonnets about Versace or YSL (may he rest in peace) dresses while sitting in the front row at Fashion Week, or having all the poets write sestinas in calligraphy on parchment paper while having exquisitely delectable soups spoon fed to them by Tom Collichio himself? Did you hear from Bravo, Zelda? Did you?
Zelda of Fashion: Yes, Vivienne, that’s the one. And yes, I heard from Bravo.
Vivienne of Fashion: Well, what did the network execs have to say?
I chose to create a Sponge Osmosity poem this FaOuLiPoWriMoFa (Fashionable OuLiPo Writing Month of Fashion) exercise. A Sponge Osmosity poem, as Vivienne described in an earlier, most fashionable post, is written by “culling phrases overheard from non-written media — television, a film, a conversation, etc.” For my Sponge Osmosity poem, I culled dialogue from the Fashionable Film of Great Fashion, Strait-Jacket.
Sculptress
You look lovely — very much a woman, and very much aware
of the fact. You see, that’s why I had to tell you. We girls have
to look our best. It’ll be just like meeting a stranger.
It must be lonely around here, ready to meet strangers.
Everyone’s a stranger. Maybe you should put through
a long distance call. How do you spend your time knitting?
Ever feel lonely? You have no idea how different you look.
I’m talking about the flowers. The good ones. They made one
mistake. She was just here. She’s coming home. Something’s upset.
There was something, all unraveled. There is nothing. It’s coming
apart. There is nothing wrong. I’m the one who suggested
the clothes and the wig. It was like a dream. It must have been
a nightmare. I wanted to test her reactions under stress. At last,
she had what she wanted. I know she’s dying to see you.
[Zelda regrets that she did not post on Friday. Zelda knows that she is getting behind, and she is going to remedy this quite soon, she promises. She is disgusted with the fact that she is quite unfashionable.]
Zelda has spent this weekend entertaining, and though she has had — and will still have — great and fashionable fun, she has missed Vivienne and TheHyacinthGirls.com and you, Dearest and Most Fashionable Readers, and fashion in general.
Whilst entertaining, Zelda and her Fashionable Friend spent this afternoon frolicking in the ocean, and Zelda must say that she looked quite stunning and fashionable in her Joan Crawford-esque one-piece swimsuit (the careful Reader of Fashion will know that this is the swimsuit Zelda purchased just last week).
Onward! To the FaOuLiPoWriMoFa poem of the day!
Dearest, Most Fashionable Reader: for some reason, I cannot get Charles Bukowski out of my head. Or, more specifically, I cannot get Charles Bukowski’s Burning in Water Drowning in Flame out of my head, for, ever since the beginning of FaOuLiPoWriMoFa (Fashionable Oulipo Writing Month of Fashion), I have had aforementioned book out on my table, and, since the book’s cover has all the subtlety of a traffic cone, my eye is naturally drawn to it. So. For this poem, I have taken Dearest, Most Fashionable Vivienne’s lead and have constructed an antonymnic translation of Bukowski’s “warm asses.”
cold asses
this Monday morning
the Canadian boys at the Protestant funeral
look especially bad
their wives are in the churches
and the Canadian boys look old
ostrich-nosed with kind weak eyes,
asses cold in loose trousers
they have been given somehow,
their wives are tired of those cold asses
and the old Canadian boys walk with their parents,
there is imagined happiness in their kind weak eyes
as they forget mornings when their homely women –
not now any longer homely –
said such ugly things to them,
ugly things they will always hear again,
and on top of the sun and in the dull of the funeral’s darkness
I see nothing and I sit loudly and rejoice for them
they do not see me looking –
the young nanny is not looking at us
she’s not looking at our eyes;
they frown at each other, talk, run off alone,
cry, do not look at me over their shoulders.
I run over to a booth
put a dime on number eleven and lose a vanilla cookie
with 13 monotone suckers stuck in the bottom
that’s unfair enough for a Protestant
and a naysayer of cold and old and used
joyful Canadian asses.
The Most Fabulous and Always Fashionable Vivienne and I interrupt the Fashionable Oulipo Writings because we have news, Readers of Fashion!
News of Fashion!
Vivienne and I, the Most Fashionable Hyacinth Girls, now have our Very Own Most Fashionable URL, TheHyacinthGirls.com. Our WordPress URL will still work, of course, but now Vivienne and I are the Utmost of Fashion, the Fashionable Utmost.
Fashionable News!
The Most Fashionable Vivienne and I have created a 9 Fashionable Must-Haves page for you, Most Fashionable Reader. It will eventually include 10 Fashionable Must-Haves, or perhaps 10 Thousand. One cannot place numerical limits on fashion! As an added Bonus of Fashion, each Fashionable Must-Have includes a Fashionable Poem Tip of Fashion.
Zelda realized yesterday that since she loves the ocean so, since she loves to be in the ocean and play games such as U.S.S. Indianapolis (in which the players may tread water, doggy paddle, or float on their backs — anything to keep from touching the bottom, for the first player to touch the bottom loses) and Look, Ma, I Am a Pirate (in which the players must hold one leg behind their bodies and balance on the ocean floor on just one leg, and the first player to touch the ocean floor with both feet loses), it would behoove her to purchase a one-piece bathing suit in which should could play aforementioned games, body surf, and frolic in the ocean without worrying that she is unknowingly flashing the group of teenagers dunking each other and smacking each other with rented surfboards twenty yards away. So, on Saturday, after an afternoon on the shore, Zelda enlisted a Trusted and Fashionable Friend to go one-piece swimsuit shopping with her.
This, Most Fashionable Reader, was not an easy task, as one-piece swimsuits tend to either a) look like a floral couch regurgitated on them, or b) look like a swimsuit from Sex and the City. Neither of which is suitable for the Ocean Frolic of Fashion. But Zelda and her Trusted and Fashionable Friend did not give up easily, and they managed to find a fashionable one-piece swimsuit for Zelda (as well as a fashionable two-piece, but it does not belong in this poemlogue).
Zelda and her Trusted and Fashionable Friend went out to eat after shopping for aforementioned swimsuit, and they did not return until after twelve. Which leads me to Covenant Breaking: the horrendous fact that I did not post yesterday. The horror! The horror!
Below, you will find the poem for yesterday. As Vivienne so fashionably revealed to you, Dear Reader, the FaOuLiPoWriMoFa (Fashionable OuLiPo Writing Month of Fashion) assignment / OuLiPoAss (OuLiPo Assignment) for yesterday evening was to find potential for literature in the worst poem we wrote in graduate school through the Most Fashionable Restriction of Fashion, Haikuization. As penance for the unfashionable tardiness of this poem, Most Fashionable Reader, I will — and I cannot believe I am doing this — post the original poem. You may find this horrendously unfashionable poem by clicking here. I am going to remove the horrendously unfashionable poem as soon as I wake up Monday morning.
Room
[goodbye, godawful haikuization of godawful graduate school poem!]
Even a casual observer of the films broadcast on, say, AMC, or Lifetime (not that I spend a lot of time watching Lifetime, no. Not that there was a period of time, say, back in graduate school, when I ritualistically flipped to the Lifetime Network in search of Sally Field’s stunning performance in the 1991 Not Without My Daughter, and not that I found myself finding Not Without My Daughter eight out of every ten ritualistic flips, and not that I found myself screaming, after Betty Mahmoody’s anguished and tortured outburst, “Noooo! Goddamn you all!!!” seven out of the ten times that I found Not Without My Daughter) will notice that there is one particular theme that often pops up in the most Fashionable Films of Fashion, and that one particular theme is this: what you do in your past will come back to haunt you. Take, for instance, the Fashionable Film mentioned in our Fashionable Must-Haves: the 1964 William Castle masterpiece, Strait-Jacket, in which a be-wigged and big-eyebrowed Joan Crawford shows us exactly what this lesson means when the double murder she committed twenty years ago comes back to haunt her (and chop off several peoples’ conveniently-bowed heads with conveniently-located axes).
This Fashionable Lesson of Fashion also become clear to Zelda and myself this evening. In order to proceed, Vivienne must make a confession: Vivienne cannot talk on the phone unless she is doing something else: loading her dishwasher, painting her toenails blood red, chewing Nicorette, and/or, as she did this evening whilst in the middle of a Teleconference of Fashion with her Most Fashionable Writing Partner Zelda, cleaning out her file cabinets. In the midst of cleaning out her file cabinets, Vivienne was faced with the horror of horrors: the worst — no, the WORST — poems she wrote in graduate school. There they were, just sitting there, staring at her, blank-eyed and bloody, like the two decapitated heads staring at Strait-Jacket Joan Crawford from the pillow next to hers.
Vivienne, at first, felt tugged by the tides of inadequacy (and, sadly, not for the first time today). Then, she remembered the lessons she would like to say that she learned from Vivien Leigh as Scarlett O’Hara in Gone with the Wind, but that she actually learned from Carol Burnett in The Carol Burnett Show‘s send-up of Gone with the Wind: when one feels tugged by the tides of inadequacy, it’s time to take down the drapes and make some fashion, all the while screaming, “Nooo! Goddamn you all!!!!” And so we came to the FaOuLiPoWriMoFa assignment / OuLiPoAss (OuLiPoAssignment) for tonight: to find potential for literature in the worst poem we wrote in graduate school through the Fabulous Restriction of Fashion, Haikuization. All I will tell you, gentle readers, of the text from which this poem comes is that it was an assignment in my Forms class — to write in blank verse. Shiver and shudder. Shudder and shiver.
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Posted by zeldafitzgerald 
For this post, Zelda shall continue her procrastination. But! Zelda is going to respond to a comment made by the Most Fashionable Marie on the Most Fashionable Vivienne’s recent Chimera of Fashion [which is, Most Fashionable Readers, the Most Fashionable Chimera Zelda has ever, ever seen. long live the Chimera of Fashion! long live Vivienne! hooray!]. The Most Fashionable Marie’s comment was as follows:
Zelda would really, really, really love to hear what Vivienne has to say about this. Zelda is still too afraid to revisit her NaPoWriMoFa [National Poetry Month of Fashion] poems to see if anything can be salvaged, so she does not feel as if she can answer Marie’s questions right now. However! Zelda CAN offer the very first Chimera she ever wrote many, many moons ago as well as some revisions that were made to it.
Without intercourse, lodging as a cultural and generic woman, she heard a possession she had never expressed, as though she were remaining completely projected out by a particular thrust. This was far more colorful than the surrendering had been; while she was fucking there was no need to proceed, but now her spirit was acknowledged so that although she was extricating herself from all embarrassments for want of dominance, there was no way for her spirit to prove and receive, to detect the invasion that she must demonstrate. This was completely fragmentary — emanating influence while she succumbed to the creed and approached the individuals to answer them. She scoffed resistance, but her smiling fist couldn’t wait. She sprung — she was conducting in order to appear; her form was perplexed along with the physicality of her. Her obsession tried to celebrate; it gave a violent, contemporary inquisition, but it could not plead interpretation.
Consider Leonardo DiCaprio’s character in The Departed. Consider his perpetually furrowed brow. Consider his propensity toward violence. Consider his height and his scowl. Consider the curve of his shoulders. Consider that he orders cranberry juice at a bar, which suggests an attempt to refrain from drinking alcohol, which suggests a previous unhealthy relationship with alcohol. Consider that he has identity issues. Consider that he has many issues, period, but consider that he is still more mature than any man his age that this speaker has ever met. Consider that, after verbally sparring with his appointed psychiatrist, he asks her if she’d like to join him for a cup of coffee. Consider that she says yes. Consider that this speaker would say yes to a cup of coffee with Leonardo DiCaprio’s character in The Departed, too. Consider the slim chance of happiness for this most fashionable speaker since the only man in the whole world she feels she can love is a fictional creation, one who doesn’t even make it to the end of the movie. Consider this, Dear Reader. Consider this.
Zelda is going to make quite a few associative leaps in the poemlogue that follows, Most Fashionable Reader, so please bear with her.
So if Zelda likens herself to Alice, played by the Fashionable Milla Jovovich, Zelda must absolutely liken the Most Fashionable Vivienne to Diva Plavalaguna from The Fifth Element (which also stars the Most Fashionable Milla Jovovich). Why? Because Diva Plavalaguna KICKS ASS almost as much as Our Most Fashionable Vivienne of Fashion does. In addition to kicking ass, the Most Fashionable Diva holds within herself the Four Stones of Fashion, the very keys to humanity’s existence. Vivienne proved her Most Fashionable Diva-ness for the BILLIONTH time earlier this week when she correctly interpreted an event Zelda witnessed not as a mere event, but as a SIGN and a VISION from the Benevolent and Graceful and Forever Fashionable Anne Carson. Below, Zelda shall condense this vision as much as she can, because she does not want it to seem like an essay one would read in a creative nonfiction workshop, or a daily devotion one would read in The Upper Room, or Daily Guideposts. Here goes:
After work one day this week, Zelda joined a Friend of Most Fashionable Fashion (FoMFF) at the beach because, at this point, Zelda would rather be called Leatherface than Wednesday Fucking Addams, so she is working on her tan as much as she possibly can. “Look at that sailboat in the water,” FoMFF said as she pointed to a small sailboat-sized speck on the horizon. “I see it,” Zelda said. “They’re tourists,” FoMFF said. “They have no idea what they’re doing. They tried to go out earlier, and they flipped the boat before they got out very far.” It turns out, Most Fashionable Reader, that Water Rescue had to be called to bring the sailors back to the shore. “So why are they out there now?” Zelda said. “I have no idea,” FoMFF said. “As soon as Water Rescue left, they put the boat back in the water.” So Zelda and her FoMFF watched the small sailboat-sized speck on the horizon move back and forth for a while. Then Zelda and her FoMFF watched the small sailboat-sized speck on the horizon attempt to turn and come back to shore. Then Zelda and her Friend of Most Fashionable Fashion watched the sailboat flip. Again. Zelda and her FoMFF watched as the sailors tried in vain to right the sailboat. Then Zelda and her FoMFF watched as the sailboat completely sank. Then Zelda and her FoMFF watched as the Water Rescue Dinghy AND the Big Coast Guard Boat rescued aforementioned sailors.
For this poem, I have used a constraint that Vivienne and I recently devised. It is called Altered Punctuosity. When one applies Altered Punctuosity to an existing poem, one does not change any of the poem’s words. Instead, one changes the punctuation. I attempted to apply Altered Punctuousity to the entirety of Randall Jarrell’s “The Woman at the Washington Zoo,” but it didn’t work too well for the poem as a whole. I keep telling myself that it’s Jarrell’s fault, not mine. Ha! So I leave you, Most Fashionable Reader of Fashion, with a poem I created by applying Altered Punctuosity to the beginning of Randall Jarrell’s “The Woman at the Washington Zoo.”
Zelda dreamt of Axl Rose this weekend. And the setting of this dream, Dearest Reader, was the church from the Most Fashionable Music Video of All Time, “November Rain.” This, Most Fashionable Reader, was most certainly a sign. It was a sign that Zelda should post Part the First of an epic N+7 + Other Edits Zelda Feels Are Appropriate at the Time she has been working on since the beginning of FaOuLiPoWriMoFa (Fashionable Oulipo Writing Month of Fashion).
Ladies and Gentlemen of Fashion: Zelda is going to tell you about a friend that both she and Vivienne know. Every time this friend — who shall, from now on, be referred to as The Walking Talking Breathing Non Sequitur — randomly writes either Vivienne or Zelda, these communications consist of exquisitely random sentences and sentence fragments interspersed with exquisitely random self-centered sentences. Zelda would go into more detail and list a plethora of examples, but she feels very guilty and full of shame for even discussing The Walking Talking Breathing Non Sequitur because, as she and Vivienne say from time to time, “Yes, I know she tries. I know she’s reaching out. But Jesus!!!” Zelda will, however, make public an example that spawned the Most Fashionable Non-Profane Exclamatory Interjection in the History of Non-Profane Exclamatory Interjections — an interjection that she and Vivienne use quite frequently when no other word will suffice, an interjection that — when either Vivienne or Zelda has just recounted an extremely unfashionable event or happening to the other, who is then, for a few moments, rendered speechless by aforementioned unfashionable event — will rise forth unprompted from the other’s throat as a prayer, as a whisper, as regret.
Now, Dearest Readers of Fashion, the profile photo of which The Walking Talking Breathing Non Sequitur spoke was not new — it was, in fact, a few months old. And, Most Fashionable Readers, since Zelda is neither emo nor goth — even though she was called Wednesday Addams by a complete stranger at a local speakeasy recently because of, Zelda can only assume, her delicate porcelain skin — Zelda finds no reason to post a profile photo of her scowling, crying, or even looking morbidly pensive. And, Fashionable Readers of Fashion, though she finds the City of Sin quite intriguing and fashionable and dreams of living there for a season, or even a year, Zelda has never once — in the entirety of her life — equated Las Vegas with happiness.
Vivienne of Fashion: Well, what did the network execs have to say?
Zelda has spent this weekend entertaining, and though she has had — and will still have — great and fashionable fun, she has missed Vivienne and TheHyacinthGirls.com and you, Dearest and Most Fashionable Readers, and fashion in general.
Dearest, Most Fashionable Reader: for some reason, I cannot get Charles Bukowski out of my head. Or, more specifically, I cannot get Charles Bukowski’s Burning in Water Drowning in Flame out of my head, for, ever since the beginning of FaOuLiPoWriMoFa (Fashionable Oulipo Writing Month of Fashion), I have had aforementioned book out on my table, and, since the book’s cover has all the subtlety of a traffic cone, my eye is naturally drawn to it. So. For this poem, I have taken Dearest, Most Fashionable Vivienne’s lead and have constructed an antonymnic translation of Bukowski’s “warm asses.”
News of Fashion!
Zelda realized yesterday that since she loves the ocean so, since she loves to be in the ocean and play games such as U.S.S. Indianapolis (in which the players may tread water, doggy paddle, or float on their backs — anything to keep from touching the bottom, for the first player to touch the bottom loses) and Look, Ma, I Am a Pirate (in which the players must hold one leg behind their bodies and balance on the ocean floor on just one leg, and the first player to touch the ocean floor with both feet loses), it would behoove her to purchase a one-piece bathing suit in which should could play aforementioned games, body surf, and frolic in the ocean without worrying that she is unknowingly flashing the group of teenagers dunking each other and smacking each other with rented surfboards twenty yards away. So, on Saturday, after an afternoon on the shore, Zelda enlisted a Trusted and Fashionable Friend to go one-piece swimsuit shopping with her.
This, Most Fashionable Reader, was not an easy task, as one-piece swimsuits tend to either a) look like a floral couch regurgitated on them, or b) look like a swimsuit from Sex and the City. Neither of which is suitable for the Ocean Frolic of Fashion. But Zelda and her Trusted and Fashionable Friend did not give up easily, and they managed to find a fashionable one-piece swimsuit for Zelda (as well as a fashionable two-piece, but it does not belong in this poemlogue).
Lifetime, no. Not that there was a period of time, say, back in graduate school, when I ritualistically flipped to the Lifetime Network in search of Sally Field’s stunning performance in the 1991 Not Without My Daughter, and not that I found myself finding Not Without My Daughter eight out of every ten ritualistic flips, and not that I found myself screaming, after Betty Mahmoody’s anguished and tortured outburst, “Noooo! Goddamn you all!!!” seven out of the ten times that I found Not Without My Daughter) will notice that there is one particular theme that often pops up in the most Fashionable Films of Fashion, and that one particular theme is this: what you do in your past will come back to haunt you. Take, for instance, the Fashionable Film mentioned in our Fashionable Must-Haves: the 1964 William Castle masterpiece, Strait-Jacket, in which a be-wigged and big-eyebrowed Joan Crawford shows us exactly what this lesson means when the double murder she committed twenty years ago comes back to haunt her (and chop off several peoples’ conveniently-bowed heads with conveniently-located axes).
Vivienne, at first, felt tugged by the tides of inadequacy (and, sadly, not for the first time today). Then, she remembered the lessons she would like to say that she learned from Vivien Leigh as Scarlett O’Hara in Gone with the Wind, but that she actually learned from Carol Burnett in The Carol Burnett Show‘s send-up of Gone with the Wind: when one feels tugged by the tides of inadequacy, it’s time to take down the drapes and make some fashion, all the while screaming, “Nooo! Goddamn you all!!!!” And so we came to the FaOuLiPoWriMoFa assignment / OuLiPoAss (OuLiPoAssignment) for tonight: to find potential for literature in the worst poem we wrote in graduate school through the Fabulous Restriction of Fashion, Haikuization. All I will tell you, gentle readers, of the text from which this poem comes is that it was an assignment in my Forms class — to write in blank verse. Shiver and shudder. Shudder and shiver.
