Jeannine Hall Gailey is a Seattle-area writer whose first book of poetry, Becoming the Villainess, was published by Steel Toe Books. Poems from the book were featured on NPR’s The Writer’s Almanac with Garrison Keillor, Verse Daily, and will appear in the 2007 edition of The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror. Her poems have appeared in The Iowa Review, The Columbia Poetry Review, and The Evansville Review. Her chapbook, “Female Comic Book Superheroes,” is available from Pudding House Press.
Female Comic Book Superheroes
are always fighting evil in a thong,
pulsing techno soundtrack in the background
as their tiny ankles thwack
With names like Buffy, Elektra, or Storm
they excel in code decryption, Egyptology, and pyrotechnics.
They pout when tortured, but always escape just in time,
still impeccable in lip gloss and pointy-toed boots,
to rescue male partners, love interests, or fathers.
Impossible chests burst out of tight leather jackets,
from which they extract the hidden scroll or antidote,
tousled hair covering one eye.
They return to their day jobs as forensic pathologists,
wearing their hair up, donning dainty glasses.
Of all the goddesses, these pneumatic heroines most
resemble Artemis, with her miniskirts and crossbow,
or Freya, with her giant gray cats.
Each has seen this apocalypse before.
See her perfect three-point landing on top of the chariot,
riding the silver moon into the horizon,
city crumbling around her heels.
Femme Fatale
Even our names sound delicious:
Pandora, Delilah, Bathsheba, Lola, Gilda
They speak of us in the language of pastries –
cream puff, tart, cupcake
They drool over us, put their hands in our bodies
Oh honey, Oh sugar
as if plunging into layers of white meringue
We dissolve behind veils and trench coats
our faces soon dimming
the whiskey of their tongues already forgotten
Around us the scent of orchids and tobacco flowers
bruised and senescent
blooms into the night air, thick with gunfire