Pamela Sumners
Tennessee Waltz With Tampons
Thank you, Tennessee-waltzing Republicans
for helping me, for helping me Tennessee
Tennessee, for helping to free me, free me
from the vagina-hoarding impulse impelling me
Tennessee I know you’re smart enough to know
that in the 1850s there were guys that thought
that locomotive speeds most probably were not
ladylike, because those delicate uteruses
might turn into flying buttresses hurled from
the iron horse doors from Illinois to Tennessee
from the Garden of Eden to Kingdom Come
and smack some poor man minding his own business.
And Tennessee, now I know you know in the 1950s
NASA thought women could not join the space race
because some guys thought they needed 100 pads a week
and they were not thinking about landing pads
but this was a reasonable surmise because ballast
and gravity changes might accelerate menses
like an ominous, Joycean shift in tenses. That
shift scares us all, past to progress, bounces us around.
And now Tennessee I know you have no income tax
and understandably worry about a sales-tax clemency
on sales of—those women will hoard them!—Tampax.
So Tennessee, I thank you and offer the testimonial
of a hard-core tampon addict, begging your pardon.
It started with maxi-pads and a medieval torture device
that these days the Dan Savage kink or sexually curious
might bolster their spirits with—it looked a little like a
dildo holster. I am sorry, sorry, Tennessee, but the
caviar of “sanitary pad” made me more than a little horny
for discretion—not the camel-toe weird bulge at both ends.
It drove me straight to the tampon. I had the hoarder’s lust.
And not just for any tampons! My tampons are high-shelf
and should be locked where only the nerdy pharmacist has
access, like the key to the lordly, liegely chastity belt.
I ended up with Pearl, a higher grade vaginal addiction
that costs twice as much as cardboard applications
that are more effective even though you might pinch yourself.
Sadly, my appetite spread. The house dogs sweated their beds.
Lacking hands, they could not insert them, so desperately
they resorted to trash-can diving for the used ones.
Tennessee, you told me not to recycle used needles.
You never told me the shameful cycle of tampon addiction
I could inflict on these poor dogs, my hoarding, my greed
for pure menstrual gold. Tennessee, Tennessee, Tennessee
Thank you for saving tampon addicts and hoarders like me.
Editors Note: As reported by the Associated Press on February 11, 2020, “A proposal to include feminine hygiene products during Tennessee’s annual sales-tax holiday faced resistance Tuesday from lawmakers concerned about the lack of limit on such purchases.”
Pamela Sumners is a constitutional and civil rights lawyer. Her work has appeared in Ucity Review, Mudlark Posters, Eunoia Review, Shot Glass Journal, Streetlight Magazine, and other journals, as well as in the 64 Best Poets anthology from Black Mountain Press for both 2018 and 2019, chosen by the editors of The Halcyone literary review. Sumners lives in St. Louis with her wife, son, and three rescue dogs.
SUBMIT to What Rough Beast via our SUBMITTABLE site.
If you enjoyed today’s poem and you value What Rough Beast, consider making a donation to Indolent Books, a nonprofit poetry press.
