What Do Women Want?

“What Do Women Want?” is comprised of 27 lines of free verse in one stanza. The point of view is that of a first-person speaker. The language of the poem is informal and conversational, and addresses the reader directly. While there is no formal meter—the lines of the poem are not measured out rhythmically in a pattern of feet—the poet creates rhythm and music with the use of poetic devices including repetition and internal rhyme. The poet guides the pace of the poem through a mix of shorter and longer lines.

While end rhyme does not play a formal role, it exists in ways that are at times exact and at other times slanted:

donuts in their café, past the Guerra brothers

slinging pigs from the truck and onto the dolly,

hoisting the slick snouts over their shoulders.

I want to walk like I’m the only (Lines 11-14).

Two examples of slant rhymes are brothers and shoulders, as well as dolly and only. A pair of exact rhymes occur toward and at the end of the poem:

to carry me into this world, through

the birth cries and the love-cries too (Lines 23-24),