by a.e. marlowe
I think one reason why Thomas Pynchon drives me batty is that I want to be him— paper sack special guest on Simpsons, those two or three facts in the biography before the introduction in the anthology. I envied, long and coldly, that perfected anonymity. When I go out for sport, with my non-ankles Easing calves into toes, I look like Helga the shot-putter, My butchered hair tucked behind my ears (butch) And my thighs tragically foreshortened before me. (A word for the locker-issued clothes: I delight in you. T-shirts, worn warm and sweat-washed soft, Billow under my armpits, form their folded rifts over my hips, And grow two dark spots on the back, low and high, Rorschach of myself.
These blue shorts, mediums [tight], and standard, Intimates of me and of a whole sisterhood who frown, Cinch the drawstring, cinch again. These not-white socks, ah, folded unison double-enforced toe and double-broken elastic.) Somehow in the car mirror I admire my ugliness— My double chin and fat girl cheeks, The spackling of red pimples in the T-area, The unAbout-the-Author way my nose flares into hanging nostrils, The place my dark roots show. After the game, we all go out to the Ungulate And talk our deep thoughts out Over just a half apple strudel, please, and tea.
a.e. marlowe- isn't a real person. It's a pseudonym. The first use of the word "pseudonym" as a noun in the English language occurs in J. S. Mill's contribution to Tait's Edinbrugh Magazine. The adjective forms of the word (pseudonymic, pseudonymal) occur far earlier: as in Blount's glossographia of 1656. a. e. marlowe is a noun. a. e. marlowian or a. e. marlowal are the adjective forms.