Vantage: a poem by poet Isabelle Correa
I love reading writing explores women’s desires: the wanting, the passion, and the complicated messiness that can come with living in a body that hasn’t been given permission to desire.
So when I discovered the work of
through Joe Nasta and Stone Pacific Zine, I was pretty darn happy. Isabelle, as you might discover, has quite a few poems about desire.Men have been writing about their desire for centuries, but this is something that women have been denied. Women have been relegated to finding their desires through the desires of men which, you know, have often tended to leave out women’s autonomy, well-being, and authentic pleasure.
This denial has been a part of women’s oppression. But when women can explore and express their want, however messy and complicated it may turn out to be, they access a source of power.
I am beyond thrilled to feature one of Isabelle’s poems here on thecuriousclit. You can read and listen to the full poem and check out Isabelle’s answers to some questions I asked her down below.
Read & Listen to the Poem:
1. What inspired this poem?
I was thinking about the sexual experiences that I had in high school, and it struck me that the clearest, most vivid memories I have are all of driving through this particular area in Washington State with my high school boyfriend.
It's a remarkable landscape, gorgeous but quietly so. You're driving over the Columbia River, and the land is bare but so powerful at the same time. There's the monument of the horses, "Grandfather Cuts Loose the Ponies," wind turbines, and the rimrocks, the cliffs.
The eastern Washington landscape, even in more modestly beautiful areas, invokes, for me, the passage of time. How time shapes us the way glaciers shaped the land. The relentless charging forward. There's a violence to it. Sex and romance, especially teen romance, charges forward like that, with its own kind of violence. So I was thinking of those connections and how, with time, all of that seemingly eternal love became just a memory.
2. One of the themes that resonated with me in this poem was the idea that where we are at in time changes the way that we perceive a situation. In this poem, there is the younger self who is with this person in the moment, and there is the older self who knows what happens afterwards between the narrator and her partner. What do you think can be important about taking time to look back and witness all these different selves and each of their perspectives?
I love this question because I do this a lot in my writing, look back at past selves, but I haven’t given much thought as to what can be gained from it or why I even do it.
In this particular poem, looking back at the past self, that young girl giving road head to someone she thought she was going to love forever, is a form of surrender. That’s why the speaker doesn’t look up to see the horses; she’s letting go, saying, time can take what it takes.
In general, I think it’s important to look back and witness your own life, whether that’s in writing or not, because it’s the best, most radical way to heal and grow. I do believe that the naive 17-year-old version of me driving through Vantage is still very real and part of who I am. It would do me little good to ignore or dismiss her completely. She was doing her best then, so looking back at her, I can learn to do my best (even better) now.
3. One of the things that I have loved about your work is the ongoing theme of desire. From this poem to “Girls Only Want One Thing” to “I Don’t Love You Yet” to your “Venus In…” poems, all these narrators are (women) who desire: sex, aliveness, safety, and beyond. For people who have been socialized as women, what do you think can be so challenging about witnessing and going after their desires?
You’ve hit the nail on the head again—the title of my first full manuscript (still looking for a publisher) is “Good Girl and Other Yearnings,” so yes, this is a huge theme for me and something I think about all the time.
The message that girls need to be “good” is incredibly pervasive. It’s endless. For me, growing up with 10 sisters with Christian fundamentalist parents, it was just the water in my fishbowl. I didn’t even start truly unpacking it until 3 or 4 years ago. And wow, what a mess. What a tangled mess of shame and desire. In that kind of socialization, shame and desire aren’t just tangled, they are linked, they are hand-in-hand, wearing the same mask. So you start to confuse one for the other, which can lead to either shutting yourself off or a mutation of your own desires—every sexual desire leads to even more shame, more traumatic experiences, more confusion, and less sovereignty. I’ve always been very open and sensual, so in my 20s, I got stuck in that cycle of mutated desires. When that approach was repeatedly disastrous and harmful, I tried to shut myself off. That just destroyed me.
One of the most healing things for me in the last few years is that I’m lucky to be in a healthy, open relationship where I can explore my sexuality in a safe environment. The other most healing thing has been writing love poems. My new chapbook (the collection of the Venus In… poems), “Sex Is From Mars But I Love You From Venus,” really oozes desire. It was honestly such a pleasure (pun intended) to write, especially because each poem is written from the perspective of a different zodiac sign, so I got to explore not just my desires but the world of desire.
I’m working on my next book, which will be all love poems—sweet, sad, looking back, looking forward, queer, horny, happy, tender, all of the above. I hope that book and all the collections I ever write help people feel less alone and more in love with themselves.
Author Bio
Isabelle Correa (she/her) is a writer from Washington State and the author of "Sex is From Mars but I Love You From Venus." Her work has appeared in magazines across North America, including Pank, Third Point Press, Maudlin House, and XRAY. She lives in Mexico City with her partner and their three dogs. Stay in touch on Substack and Instagram.
A big part of why I’ve created this newsletter is to help us all feel a little less alone in the world when it comes to sexuality, and I think seeing and hearing stories that resonate with our own life experiences in some way can go a long way in relieving the shame we might feel about this part of ourselves. I am so honored to have the opportunity to have been able to share Isabelle’s work on here.
Thank you all for being here! If you liked this piece, please click the ❤️(it helps more readers find the work), leave a comment, or even share it/restack it on Notes.