I Found a Love, The Falcons (featuring Wilson Pickett)

"I think that if a woman is gifted and she’s attractive she’s going to have a great time on earth. Why would she want to be anything else? I don’t think of myself as a strong woman. I never even heard that word about me until recently. I always thought that bluntly I was a glamorous goddamn exciting woman. I didn’t want to be strong at anything. I wanted to have a ball on earth. But I wanted it through the channels that I want.”

--Louise Nevelson, Dawns and Dusks: Tapped Conversations

an entire week dissolved. windows open, curtains shuddering. spring almost. a held breath, skirt tucked between my legs. endless stream of interviews. we’ll give you a call next monday. my phone line dead. balancing & rebalancing the checkbook. class on the weekends: frustration in every direction. i raise my hand. i hee & haw. two women say i admire yr passion! tho i thought my delivery was dead-pan. a blank face, even better, head. i drop dead. i swim in my own skin. try to concentrate on bright spots, slashes of sun through the slotted blinds. blinds slapping, curtains still shuddering, splitting open, exposing all that they contain. exposing only my naked body moving as if a held breath, undetectable unless placed before a mirror.

"He was not shooting dirty pictures. He believed sex appeal was 'human appeal.' He also believed 'the true nude gives a version of beauty, both physical and spiritual -- two great needs of humanity. Allen was a seer who thought his photos would inspire a kind of paradoxical chaste lust and reveal the potential of all naked women to become icons."

--David Bowman on Albert Arthur Allen