Tag: favourite things

“So, what do you go for in a girl?”
He crows, lifting the lager to his lips,
He gestures where his mate sits,
then downs his glass.
“He prefers tits.
I prefer ass.
What do you go for in a girl?”

Well, I feel quite comfortable.
The air left the room a long time ago.
All eyes are on me.
Um, if you must know,
I’d like a girl who… reads.

Yeah. Reads.

I’m not trying to call you a chauvinist,
because I know you’re not alone in this, but…

I want a girl who reads—
who needs the written word
and who uses the added vocabulary
she gleans from novels and poetry
to hold lively conversation
in a range of social situations.

I want a girl who reads—
whose heart bleeds at the words of Graham Greene
or even Heat magazine
who’ll tie back her hair while reading Jane Eyre
and goes cover to cover with each
Waterstones three for two offer
but I want a girl who doesn’t stop there.

I want a girl who reads.
A girl who feeds her addiction for fiction
with unusual poems and plays
that she hunts out in crooked bookshops for days and days and days.
She’ll sit addicted at breakfast,
soaking up the back of the cornflakes box
and the information she gets
from what she reads makes her a total fox,
because she’s interesting and she’s unique,
and her theories make me go weak
at the knees.

I want a girl who reads.
A girl whose eyes will analyze the menu over dinner,
who’ll use what she learns to kick my ass in arguments
so she always ends the winner.
But she’ll still be sweet and she’ll still be flirty
‘Cause she loves the classics and they’re pretty dirty.
And that means late at night she’ll always have me in a stupor
as she paraphrases the raunchier moments from the works of Jilly Cooper.

See, some guys prefer asses.
Some prefer tits.
And I’m not saying that I don’t like those bits,
but what’s more important?
What supersedes
Is a girl a with passion, wit and dreams.
So I’d like a girl who reads.

— Mark Grist —