Girl Talk Triptych

by

(G)IRL

1
Girl Talk Triptych
(G)IRL
dancing girl press & studio, 2016

Based in Chicago, dancing girl press & studio creates a variety of open & limited
edition books, art, and paper goods, as well as various ephemera-inspired gifts and
accessories. The dancing girl press chapbook series was founded in 2004 to
publish and promote the work of emerging women writers and artists. Spawned
by the online zine wicked alice, the series seeks to publish work that bridges the
gaps between schools and poetic techniqueswork that's fresh, innovative, and
exciting. The press has published over 300 titles by emerging women poets in
delectable open-run handmade editions. Our books are available via our website,
at select independent bookstores, Chicago area literary events, and through
author readings.

www.dancinggirlpress.com
editing & design: Kristy Bowen
dancinggirlpress@yahoo.com

2
 Narrator:

This is the true story of several (G)IRLsgirls in real lifewho got

together to share poems, and started writing down the girl talk that
ensued. This is a phone conversation, this is a holiday party, this is a
trip to the movies. This is Girl Talk Triptych.

3
 Girl Talk I

Setting: Daily (G)IRL Life.

Marisa and Caolan are talking to each other on long-corded phones on the
extreme right and left of the stage. Marisa is leaning against a wall, doing her
nails and chewing bubble gum while browsing a copy of Vogue. Caolan is
vacuuming and smoking while reading aloud from a pulp novel.

The other (G)IRLs are distributed across the center of the stage. Each has a
phone next to her. Becca is pacing back and forth across the stage, her face in a
copy of Leaves of Grass. Emily is listening to her Walkman. JT is trying on
bras over her clothes in front of a mirror and arranging her hair into the
natural hat for Girl Talk II. Lily is practicing yoga.

4
Marisa (reading to Caolan from magazine, over the phone): Her breasts like
orbs. . . .

Caolan (reading from pulp novel to Marisa): Her cheek as soft as a

womans thighs. . . .

Marisa (now its her own idea): His cock like a phallus!

Caolan: Like a cock.

Marisa: Like a cock.

Caolan: This ones right up my alley.

Marisa: My body is as healthy as a cock.

Becca (looking up from Leaves of Grass): Walt Whitman.

Caolan: It sounded like something he would say.

Becca: The collective (g)irl unconscious?

Emily, JT, and Lily pick up their phones and plug in to the collective (g)irl
unconscious.

Emily (still stretching; authoritatively): My mother had a double

mastectomy.

All (looking up from whatever theyre doing; in unison): T-M-I!

Becca: . . . infantilized breasts . . .

5
Emily: I mean, I say nipples all the time!

Becca: Nobody needs to have them. . . .

JT (looking at Emily and yelling across the stage at her, breaking the phone
conceit): Youre lanky!

Emily (to JT): You have breasts!

Emily (hangs up phone; to audience):

A weird night in San Francisco when

I lost my nipples
My nipple bleeds into the breastmeat
My alien nipple bleeds into the alien breastmeat

All (holding phones away from faces; cacophonous yelling into mouthpieces)

TMI!
TMI!
TMI!

Lily: . . . Dad.

Becca: I dont wanna know about it.

Lily starts walking among the girls, cradling the phone under one arm,
adjusting their positions like a yoga teacher.

6
Lily:

your mind controls your brain

your brain controls your body

Everyone else nods and smiles like good students, then begins slowly to shake
their heads.

Everyone else:

(lack of
psychological consensus)

Lily:

the emotional register of your brain

a deeply damaged person

Marisa (staring at a magazine page): His mistakes were also--

Caolan (indicating her pulp novel): His theoretical musings of the mind--

Lily (agreeing, prompting): He finally disappeared one day.

Becca (frustrated): You know that time doesnt accumulate.

7
Emily:

We were talking about vaginas

or I was

I used to get multiple orgasms

on my bike

Lily (putting her arm around Emily): Its too soon to feel terrible.

The (G)IRLs hang up their phones.

8
 Girl Talk II

Setting: Holiday party at Beccas house.

The (G)IRLs move their phones to the back of the stage and arrange six chairs
in a semicircle facing the audience. They each take a wrapped present or gift
bag and put it on the floor inside the semicircle. A white elephant party is
about to begin. Becca puts on a tiny Santa hat. The (G)IRLs gather in a circle,
drinking wine and blowing noisemakers.

9
JT (raising her glass in a toast, pointing at Becca): My natural hat eclipsed
her regular hat!

Everyone toasts except Becca, who sticks her tongue out at JT.

The (G)IRLs sit down on their chairs.

Lily:

All I remember is her handing me a twenty and saying goodnight

Like, look at your bloody baby!
FUMER TUER TUER : FUMER TUER!

JT (time sitting down, more serious): All famous men cheat on their wives.

Everyone else (head nod): Mmmmh-hmmm!

Becca: Obama?

Emily, JT, Lily: Nooooo! (now lowing in protest) Mooooo!

Caolan: Obama or Jay-Z?

Emily, JT, Lily (shaking heads furiously): Not Obama.

Each (G)IRL grabs a present from the pile, scrutinizes it, shakes it, smells it.

JT (folding hands in prayer):

Little boners lit up in his eyes.

The circularity of it allits unknowable.

10
Marisa (taking present from JT): Are you sure you dont want the facial?

Caolan (snatching present from Lily): Safety Jesus!

Becca (taking Lilys present from Caolan and giving it back to Lily): I will
not have no stealing at this white elephant that I worked so hard to
google.

Emily (opening her present and peeking inside): Condom sutra, ribbed for
her pleasure. I will think of the most erotic thing to put in this box.

All huddle around and peer inside the box.

JT (examining present): It may just be a good cuddle.

Lily (mocking): This is my giant hand job arm!

Emily (sulking): I just wanted it to be more erotic.

JT: Basically, she taught you some anatomy. It was never a hand job.

Emily (snatching the box): Give me my erotic box back.

JT: Look erect, heathens!

All freeze in tableau vivant for 10 seconds. Emily falls over giggling, and the
others follow.

(G)IRLs scramble to get one present each and run to put them with their
phones at rear of stage.

11
They grab 3D glasses and popcorn and Becca grabs posterboard.

They arrange chairs in a row facing the audience, ad-libbing about how
theyre going to be late for a movie.

L to R (from audience POV): Lily, JT, Marisa, Emily, Caolan, Becca.

They then start staring at the screen (above the audiences heads), feeding
themselves popcorn, as we transition into

12
 Girl Talk III

Setting: Movie theater.

The (G)IRLs are wearing 3D glasses and sitting on chairs, passing around a
big container of popcorn and small red cans of Sofia bubbly, staring at the
screen, stifling giggles, sometimes whispering, sometimes yelling.

A huge still image of Leonardo DiCaprio as Gatsby, raising his glass, is

projected above their heads.

Plants in the audience shush the (G)IRLs.

13
Caolan: Jay always goes straight for the bush.

Emily: The bigger the bush, the harder they fall. (pause)

Becca holds up a footnote on posterboard:

The bush represents

libidinous lifeforce.

Emily: Its like the eyelashes of the vagina.

Becca (sitting down): Oh yikes, big bush.

Caolan: Exactly. Bye.

Emily (eating popcorn): I want a 70s French-lady bush.

All except Emily, including audience plants: Shhhhhhhhhhh.

Emily (eating): I have a relationship with a wax artist.

All except Emily: SHHHHHHHHHH!

Emily (eating): I had a weird experience . . . as a woman.

The other (G)IRLs murmur, nod, or shrug.

14
JT: Slap my drink. The tip was sex.

Caolan: Let me guess, it was hard to be a stewardess.

Lily: Theyre buying a condo is the worst news.

Becca holds up another footnote on posterboard:

The condo represents

All Shutting Down.

Marisa: Condos sound young to old people.

Lily: Theyve opened a Roth IRA together.

Marisa: Condos sound old to old people.

JT:

Its all about surfacing.

All the boys memoirs. . . .

Becca, Caolan, Marisa (to the others): Mommy was mean!

Emily, Lily, JT (to the first group): Mommy smoked cigarettes!

Marisa: Little . . . Plastic . . . Assholes.

JT:

15
Trying to get some help, naked.
Just a Catholic, so free.

Caolan:

You have to confess

your sins to get the dress.

JT: Gotta trim that bush for Daisy.

Emily: I always have a good time.

All except Emily: Shhhhhh.

JT (indicating whats happening on screen): Me as Jerry Garcia.

Caolan: Alotta girls. (gestures to Emily and JT) Two tarts.

Emily: Bad times with a good tart.

All except Emily: Shhhhhh.

Marisa: We need to ouij, majorly.

Becca:

Whats better?
To not have a role at all
or to be the dead girl?

16
Caolan (slaps Beccas back): Itll keep, old sport.

Emily (slaps Caolans back): Itll keep.

The (G)IRLs stare at the screen, entranced.

17
Girl Talk Triptych Credits

The publication of Girl Talk Triptych makes a physical object out of a play that
has already had several performative lives. These words were first uttered in
conversation during gatherings of (G)IRL, or Girls in Real Life, a writing group
of feminist poets that began meeting in New York City in 2010. After a little wine
and poetry, a kind of collective personality would seize us, and much
wisecracking, confession, taboo-breaking, and goofballery would ensue. Girl talk:
the most intimate, weird, outrageous talk there isso girly and yet breaking all
the rules of decorous feminine behavior. Behind the closed doors of each others
living rooms, we pushed the bounds of propriety and selfhood until we seemed to
speak in unisonor, indeed, as if performing a very witty absurdist play.

At some point, this talk began to become poems: one of us would grab her
notebook or phone (or scoot over to the electric typewriter I left out during
meetings at my house) and become the official transcriptionist for the session, and
calls of Write that down! and Did you get that? would punctuate the rest of
the evening. Sometimes we literally could not stop talking and get on with the
reading and discussion of poems; and so, I like to think, the talk became the
poetry.

At first, we published some of these poems in the online literary journals Gritty
Silk and Maggy: thanks to Chelsea Tadeyeske and Adam Fitzgerald, respectively,
for finding them just ridiculous enough to print. After seeing the poem Girl Talk
#1 in Maggy, the (wo)manorial collective asked if they could include it in their
online exhibition Susan/Elizabeth.

Then, when Niina Pollari asked me to curate a slot of her Brooklyn literary arts
festival, Popsickle, we began the process of adapting the Girl Talk poems into the
play that youve just read. I took lines from the poems and assigned them to
characters, whose names were simply the names of the poets acting in the play:
Marisa Crawford, Becca Klaver, Lily Ladewig, Caolan Madden, Emily Skillings,
and Jennifer Tamayo. The play also contained dialogue from Hanna Andrews and
Krystal Languell, who were part of (G)IRL, and Kristin Aardsma, who was
visiting during the holiday party depicted in the play. Sometimes someone got her
own original line, but just as often I mixed it up, inspired by a sense of collective

18
speech. Next, Caolan added the stage directions, also inspired by real life. On June
22, 2013, we gathered props and rehearsed in my apartment before heading down
the street to Launchpad, a now defunct arts space at 721 Franklin Avenue in
Brooklyn, to re-perform at Popsickle the language that we had once spoken in
real life.

A year or so later, Marisa saw a call for submissions for Small Press Traffics
Poets Theater festival, and we sent the play. They accepted it, and it was
performed again on January 23, 2015 at Omni Commons (4799 Shattuck Avenue
in Oakland, CAwhere Id attended an Alice Notley conference a few months
earlier) by M. Rebekah Otto, Steffi Drewes, Alicia Dattner, Samantha Giles,
Trisha Low, Laurel Hayne-Miller, and Sara Wintz, who directed. After seeing the
Poets Theater performance, poet and editor Eric Sneathen asked us to contribute
to the fourth issue of his handcrafted journal, Macaroni Necklace, and he published
some of the latest Girl Talk poems along with a photograph of one of our props, a
science-fair-style posterboard that wed held up during the Popsickle
performance.

We were always baffled but delighted when people outside of (G)IRL liked the
poems or the play. Its easy to see girl talk as frivolous or embarrassing, but Ive
always thought of Girl Talk Triptych as a peek into the collective girl
unconscious, as we say in the play. Talk would erupt from our bodies during
those (G)IRL sessionsit was like what Hlne Cixous writes in The Laugh of
the Medusa: A feminine text cannot fail to be more than subversive. It is
volcanic; as it is written it brings about an upheaval of the old property crust,
carrier of masculine investments; theres no other way.

I also have a sense of Girl Talk Triptych as a New York School document,
reflecting a tradition of witty sociability, especially as seen in the talk poetry that
Alice Notley was writing in the late 1970s and early 1980s, when she created
what she called salon conditions in her home at 101 St. Marks Place. Poets
would drop in and out all day, which allowed her to write, be part of a poetry

19
community, and raise her sons at the same time. Our meetings were more
officially planned and less structured by the demands of domestic labor, but like
Notleys poems My Bodyguard in Waltzing Matilda (1981) and As You Like It
in Margaret and Dusty (1985), Girl Talk Triptych is a poetic play made up of poets
real-life speech.

This little play shows what happens when you put a bunch of girl-women in a
room and they figure out from each other what they know and what makes them
laugh. Its the volcanic eruption of subjugated knowledge. Girl Talk Triptych also
freezes a moment in time that fulfilled one of my lifes dreams: it documents the
years when I moved to New York and found my poets. This golden time is
already passingpeople leave the group or move away, and everyone is always so
busy in this citybut, thanks to Kristy Bowen and dancing girl press, our girl
talk lives on.

Becca Klaver
Brooklyn, NY
January 2016

20