The Hot Pink Comb: An inread review of Julia Cohen's Good Timing & Gertrude Stein: Inside Snoopy’s snout maggots feast upon my blood
by Alina Stefanescu
This collage review contains three types of text. All bold words in italics are directly quoted from Julia Cohen's book. All unbolded words in italics are direct quotes of Gertrude Stein interspersed throughout Cohen's book. All regular words are mine. Each numbered section corresponds with and quotes from that section in Cohen’s fascinating book.
I.
I read this book with a plastic pink comb in my hair as if everything had already happened. The comb came with the book. It was part of the package. Feelings, like baby foxes, make their way out of the dark den into the clover. by written I mean made. & by made I mean felt. Acorns like horses' nostrils. The window made an icon of trees when the period started. In 7th grade, none of my friends talk about their periods but I see flannel shirts tied around waists like an extra protective layer. The great question is can you think a sentence. The solely interior sentences are possible forms of existence. I question how to unleash the sentence. A sentence has wishes as an event...like an extra protective layer. I see their newly hairless legs….The infamous dog trots in.
II.
I'm in Berlin & sitting across from a man I barely know but want to know better. I am wearing the pink comb and thinking about periods. An intensity like an explosive peony, like a microscope over any feeling. When it is there it is out there. I am thinking about sentences.... Maybe the desire to avoid changing how someone else experiences you. I told my mom right away about my period because the azaleas were blooming and I was the latest bloomer on the block. This is a sentiment not a sentence. Because I didn't tell my mom I had my period for a few months. Because I waited & accumulated a number of stained pairs from the first bleeding of each month. I thought blood made us human. A boy said bleeding made them women. Maybe I'm trying to protect you from a look of horror....Yet we are loud with pointing. The mail carrier asks about the pink comb. It's just something I'm wearing for today, but not as committed as the postal service uniform. The secret is not quite the impossible feeling of speech. The secret is the impossible feeling of timing. A sentence can be taken care of. The mail carrier doesn't know I play this game called poetry on the porch with words to keep words from making noise in the house. A sentence makes not it told but it hold. But where to hide the underwear?
III.
My hiding space is a Snoopy mask. Each month I stick bloody underwear onto its head. It's the extension of my secret inability to change the mood. At any moment when you are you you are you without memory of yourself because if you remember yourself while you are you you are not for the purposes of creating you. I'm not trying to create a masterpiece. I'm trying to create a sentence outside of myself. My partner asks about the pink comb that doesn't look like me. He scowls. He wants to know if I've seen "his" comb—the little black one he got in a kit. I'm scared to turn into sentiment: an event that allows others to create me through their responses. It's not that I want to accomplish anything with the comb. It's just that the comb is part of the package and I don't want my partner to borrow the poem. Pre-sentiment side the fox den....I wanted to hold on to my experience before it became someone else's reaction, yours. "But the fact that you've been wearing that comb all day at an angle makes it seem like you're trying to make a point about something, and it's not really working." I have sex with this man who lilts good. "I think you should use it maybe comb your hair." Feelings without faces in the fox den. We eat baklava & coat our teeth in honey. We are ferns unfurling through floorboards. We finish the—
IV.
My mom gets me a cake: a Period Cake. A Congratulations You're A Woman Cake. A sentence needs recovering. This sentence covered in icing. The porch covered in expectant poem devices. Five petals forming a little flower grenade near the stairs. As if I am the sentence. I am so close to telling the man sitting across from me everything. I skip the part about maggots. I empty out Snoopy's snout. The comb came with the book. The mail carrier doesn't know. A boy said bleeding made them women. The potential thrill he may experience of knowing he's the only one that's heard this long-kept sentence negated by disgust. Now think carefully of monstrosity. Of skunk cabbage & dry dirt. It's at this point that the memory pivots. I can only see this memory from my father's office window, his hands on the typewriter. Like a corset. It is very hard to save the sentence. "Acting like you have a secret when all you have is a pink plastic comb, well, some might say it's duplicitous." I keep thinking of prayer beads. I keep thinking of people looking positive at the yoga center. Dirt colluding with drawstring. This memory's pivot is the migration of timing: feathers falling out of timing's good-bad spectrum. I worry I will have to come forward & make some sort of statement, claiming the bag.
This sentence covered in femme hearts. A sentiment held like the note of a balloon pricked by a pine needle. Tree bark dinged with wayward slingshots. I tell the man across from me of my fear.... I want the sentence to point loudly.
Alina Stefanescu was born in Romania and lives in Birmingham, Alabama. She serves as Co-Director of PEN Birmingham. Her debut fiction collection, Every Mask I Tried On, won the Brighthorse Prize and was published in May 2018. Her writing can be found in diverse journals, including Prairie Schooner, North American Review, FLOCK, Southern Humanities Review, Crab Creek Review, Up the Staircase Quarterly, Virga, Whale Road Review, and others. She serves as Poetry Editor for Pidgeonholes, President of Alabama State Poetry Society, Co-Founder of 100,000 Poets for Change Birmingham, and proud board member of Magic City Poetry Festival. More online at www.alinastefanescuwriter.com or @aliner.