It starts as a faint whiff of horse sweat and stables. On Spring nights when I walk home from the subway through our compound in Shanghai, I can map where I am in relation to the jasmine vines surging over the rockeries. Under lantern light, these boulders look as though they are capped with snow. From twenty feet away, the scent is seductive – a mix of barely-ripe banana, paperwhites, and pony muzzle. Ten feet away, it’s intoxicating. Especially if …
Tag: Sweat
Olfactory Report 9: Poetics of Scent by Catherine Haley Epstein + Poetry by Elizabeth Powell
“Poetry is the lifeblood of rebellion, revolution, and the raising of awareness.” Alice Walker April is National Poetry Month, and for the past few weeks my 10 year old has arrived home with endless haikus, acrostics, and concrete poems. Part of this equation is that he is not a fully self-conscious human and is still nimble with his words. Poetry is deceivingly simple, and one of the hardest art forms to do well. Poetry is in fact a major art …
The Olfactory Report 2: Armpits, Ribaldry, and Animalic Perfumes for Your Valentine, too! * Catherine Haley Epstein
Filthy, Stinky, Sexy Sex hormones come out of our armpits. These apocrine sweat glands do what is called emotional sweating. These hormones affect our behavior and physiology. We know the armpit sex hormone begins after puberty (when we actually begin to emit a smell from our armpits), and they are also located in the areola and nipples of the breast, ear canal, eyelids, wings of the nostril, perianal region, and some parts of the external genitalia. All, one could argue, are erogenous zones. I’ve also written recently about …
“The Teacher Who Grew Jasmine and Rooted Out My Stutter” * Autobiographical Fiction * Richard Williamson
I was thirteen years old and we had moved, again. I hated it but back in the mid 20th Century that’s what ministers did. A lot. And my Dad was a minister. The problem wasn’t the bother of moving, it was that as a boy who stuttered, I had to face a whole new set of classmates, some of whom would certainly make my life very difficult. Up until that time in my life, I had always been called Richard. …
“Chlorinated” * Personal Essay * Liz Charlotte Grant
I. Chlorine (KLOHR-een): Cl on the table of elements, in the halogen family; extremely reactive, strips color from whatever it touches, heavier than air; discovered by Carl Wilhelm Scheele in 1774 when he poured hydrochloric acid over pyrolusite (which resembles a lava rock) and, surprise, a yellow-green gas smoke evaporated, filling Scheele’s nostrils with the bright-white smell of bleach. Chlorine was put to use in the cleaning industry for deodorizing and disinfecting; also used to clean human wounds. Then it …
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The Smell in Your Sentiment * Poetry * Harley Claes
The aroma of your skin Reeked of pheromone and no forethought My mindless indulgence In the opposite sex Was both habit and hunger So I loved when those veined hands held me under Harder than I could handle I subsided in the sea of your sweat Stinking of hot And basking in humid It was under your drip that smelt Of chlorine & fresh linen Not a masculine musk, But a boy beginning I happened on you holy Your fortress …
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