Embouchure

poems

Emilia Phillips

• Publisher: The University of Akron Press
• Year: 2021
• eBook ISBN: 9781629222158
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Poetry
• Index: Literature

An embouchure is the way in which a wind musician applies their mouth to an instrument's mouthpiece, and Embouchure, Emilia Phillips's fourth poetry collection, sets its mouth, ready to play. Trumpeting a picaresque coming out story, the poems are at turns self-deprecatory and revelatory, exploring sexual fluidity and non-monosexuality. From the speaker's adolescent crushes to her closeted 20s to her eventual acceptance of queerness, her disarming joy—even at her own mistakes—is cut with challenges to toxic masculinity and reckonings with anticipatory anxiety. The tomboy the speaker once was is transfigured into "a presexual soft butch / Medusa" with a "beautiful, beautiful / body that didn't know yet // how to contain itself." Elsewhere, the speaker evades a Dickinsonian personification of Death, who seems more like an inescapable ex-boyfriend than a welcome bridegroom. Phillips's mock-confessionalism is as brassy as it is vulnerable.

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Halftitle Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Dedication
• Age of Beauty
• My Mother Confessed i was Conceived to Ravel’s “Boléro”
• The Cast, in Order of Appearance
• My First Kiss was in a Room where they Polish Lenses for Eyeglasses
• The First Boy i thought i Loved was in a Band called Romanticide
• The Only thing i Learned Working at an Italian Restaurant for that one Week when i was Eighteen was
• They called me Unladylike
• A Kind of Second Virginity
• That Time my Mother and i were Photographed for Woman’s World Magazine with our Cat Oreo Nursing on our Cocker Spaniel Ginnie,
• Hyperbole is Underrated
• To the Boy i caught Rummaging through my Panty Drawer During my Fifteenth Birthday Party
• My Childhood Dog Jessie once ate a Box of 120-Count Crayolas and Shat Speckled Rainbows for a Week
• “You should write a Poem about that,” they say
• Poem about Death Beginning with a Humblebrag and Ending with a Shower Beer
• Memento Doloris
• Deep Calls to Deep
• To the Young Man who always Sat Quietly in the back of the First Literature Class i Ever Taught, who gave me a Poem Comparing me to a Commonly Hunted Bird
• One of the First Girls on whom i had a Crush was Named Hope
• I wanted to be Patrick Swayze, not Jennifer Grey
• Scabs
• Pathetic Fallacy
• When the Phlebotomist Stuck the Needle in me, i looked away only to see a TV on which a Chef was Injecting Pork Loin with Marinade
• This Beautiful thing is Making me so Depressed
• Haha-Boohoo
• At a Party a Woman Introduced herself to me as Dawn
• Plaster Cast
• My OB/GYN Suggests i Consider Cosmetic Labiaplasty,
• At Home Alone, in my Underwear and new Strap-On
• Doesn’t Matter who you are or what you do, Something in the world will make a fool of you
• I Used to get Boys to Kiss me by Bragging about my Embouchure
• Some Sentences need to be Written in the Passive Voice
• To my Father, who Closed his Eyes and Ran Toward me with an Outstretched Towel when i came back on the beach at Mobile Unaware one of my New Boobs had Slipped my Bikini Triangle
• I Tried to write a Poem called “Impostor Syndrome” and Failed
• At Eleven, I Described an Aging, Female Celebrity to my Father as Looking “Rode Hard and put up Wet”
• Poppies and Field Flowers
• I am Alive Today because of the Tree in Front of my Bedroom Window
• The Ants Weigh more than the Elephants
• Confirmation Bias
• Wish Against Chekhov’s Gun
• I have Anxiety about Anxiety
• My Dog Refused to go Near the Dead Rabbit in the Backyard
• Butterfly-Shaped Organ
• Bloodwork
• My Neighbor’s Working out to Christian Pop Music in her Front Yard during a Pandemic
• I think about the Time my Weather Radio Forecasted “Although the Sky will be Overcast your House will Still be Filled with Light”
• Notes
• Acknowledgments