Vagina Monologue

Light flows up my river and my dogs stand on the balcony and shout down at dogs in the river. The church tower's basking in light. Birds are rejoicing. The hill, and all its palm trees and clothes hanging in no-wind now, is filled with light. When I first began reading Henry Miller (I keep thinking Henry S. Miller) I kept seeing this town as a man sprawled out on his back---and the church tower pointing straight up his penis. There are so many ways to paint a penis. And there are so many ways to say Vagina. I am prowling back and forth in this gold-river-light, lifting my leg, muttering "Vagina, Vagina, Vagina." A woman's taking the clothes down now. Robins fly up out of the river. Sometimes they smash into windows. My parrots are cat-calling. The light's deepening. And deepening. Soon it will die. Joyelle McSweeney's mother's a librarian and she says Nabokov sure "writes up a storm."