First, let me tell you that Dorothy Parker’s poems and prose do not date.  They’re still fresh, witty, and broken-hearted. She knows who women are.  She knows that we all experience disillusion at one time or other.  The difference is I lounge on the floor, while she, I gather, remains vertical.  

HORIZONTALLY YOURS, by Kat

First, I curl up on the dining room floor. I am depressed, crying a bit and moaning. 

“What’s wrong, honey?” 

“Nothing.”  And it is nothing. 

 I’m lying on the floor until I feel up to crawling to the kitchen where I might find a dusty, expired antidepressant.

But then I wonder if it might have lost its anti- effect over the years. I take a vitamin instead.

Afterwards, I read some charming, funny, sad poetry by Dorothy Parker. Always the funniest person in the room, she struggled with depression all her life, but even her sad poems are comical.  

Here are five of my favorite of her poems.

NEWS ITEM

Men seldom make passes
At girls who wear glasses.

OBSERVATION

If I don’t drive around the park,
I’m pretty sure to make my mark.
If I’m in bed each night by ten,
I may get back my looks again,
If I abstain from fun and such,
I’ll probably amount to much,
But I shall stay the way I am,
Because I do not give a damn.

FROM A LETTER FROM LESBIA (N.B. This is a riff on Catullus’ love poems to Lesbia from the point-of-view of his girlfriend.)

… So, praise the gods, Catullus is away!
 And let me tend you this advice, my dear:
Take any lover that you will, or may,
 Except a poet. All of them are queer.

It’s just the same- a quarrel or a kiss
 Is but a tune to play upon his pipe.
He’s always hymning that or wailing this;
 Myself, I much prefer the business type.

That thing he wrote, the time the sparrow died-
 (Oh, most unpleasant- gloomy, tedious words!)
I called it sweet, and made believe I cried;
 The stupid fool! I’ve always hated birds….

RESUME

Razors pain you;
Rivers are damp;
Acids stain you;
And drugs cause cramp.
Guns aren’t lawful;
Nooses give;
Gas smells awful;
You might as well live

ONE PERFECT ROSE

A single flow’r he sent me, since we met.
     All tenderly his messenger he chose;
Deep-hearted, pure, with scented dew still wet—
     One perfect rose.

I knew the language of the flowers;
     “My fragile leaves,” it said, “his heart enclose.”
Love long has taken for his amulet
     One perfect rose.

Why is it no one ever sent me yet
     One perfect limousine, do you suppose?
Ah no, it’s always just my luck to get
     One perfect rose.