THE FOURTH WAVE KISSING PARTY
Let’s not invite the whole class; let’s pretend that we are the bosses of the fourth wave. [The Fourth
Wave, JoyceAnn McManus would say. In all caps, she would say] and when she is done being the
boss of the way words will appear, we’ll kick JoyceAnn out of the waves. When we play pretend,
we’ve got on cowboy hats and eucalyptus panties—refreshing!—and go off into the sunset every
evening and to the disco every night. [That would be cowgirl hat or cowwoman hat JoyceAnn
McManus would say and bucking broncos and steers and the dull-eyed cows she would say not
noticing that girl and woman have been left behind for altogether new pronouns JoyceAnn McManus
wrings and wrings and wrings her hands] and we wouldn’t have time for those words we’d opt out
of consensus we’d just leave her behind so much on speed we’d be. May peace be with the slow-
worded. Yippee Ki Yay the way we are and will be, we bosses of the fourth wave; we labia-ed Bruce
Willises, we ecstatic and drugged and discoed and rocked hard; were we each to pull a book from the
shelves loosening a new cluster is The Way We Were. Is the way these waves go which is all we agree
that we’ll ever agree? JoyceAnn? From behind the shelves whose open backs are portals. Petals we’d
say we’d say slippery sounds all day because we could say them without gagging on them the oysters
sliding perfectly the way they do in dreams the way they do when the party makes our waves
temporal. When we find ourselves sliding backward past the first wave where our loves light slender
torches and we dress in full skirts go braless kiss in corners kiss again in corners where all there is is
kissing and our mouths are too busy to say JoyceAnn McManus shut your mouth all you have is
words and we are kiss
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Kate Rosenberg-Minbiole is a feminist housewife cowgirl movie star who is also a lecturer in the Program for Writing and Rhetoric at Penn State University. She has her Ph.D. from the University of Utah, her MFA from the University of Arizona and has published here and there, but not yet everywhere. Kate’s got a husband and a daughter and if she had a dog, she’d call him Yadi.
