Ode to Edith Massey (Aunt Ida in John Waters’ Female Trouble)

Art by Bill Wolak

By Michael Montlack

Secretly we all want to strut like you, squeezed
into that laced-up leather catsuit, snaggle-toothed,
bleached hair teased into a cotton candy mess—
how easily you made Mae West pedestrian.

Shouldn’t we all have an Aunt Ida to guide us
in that purr simultaneously girlish and granny:
I worry that you’ll work in an office … The world
of the heterosexual is a sick and boring life.

Virgin Mary, Egg Lady, Evil Queen Carlotta—
Your real-life roles weren’t any less dramatic:
Jewish girl left at an orphanage, dive barmaid,
thrift shop owner, lead singer of a punk band.

The accidental matriarch of a counterculture.
Queers are just better, you said in Female Trouble.
John Waters might have written that line. But
only you could deliver it so authentically.

If you get tired of being a Hare Krishna, you come
live with me and be a lesbian. We will, Aunt Ida.
We will, Miss Massey. We’ll dance to your door,
chanting a new song full of your favorite curses,

hailing you, our Goddess of good-for-nothins.

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