Devices

Rhyme relies on repetition: pink drink,
big wig, tramp stamp, rank skank. Alliteration

too: Peter Piper’s pickled peppers, silly
Sally’s sheep – silly trumping smart because

the lls create consonance. Assonance
repeats vowel sounds: hot bod, dumb slut, frigid bitch.

Even his line — “Girl, we’ll have a fine time”—
or her refusals — “No! Don’t!” In metaphor

we compare two things. Suppose a man calls
a woman fox; we understand this is

not literal. Same goes for pig, dog, chick.
Same goes for octopus, as in, “His hands

were all over me.” Metonymy relies
on association: suits, skirts, that joke

about the dishwasher –If it stops working,
slap the bitch! Synecdoche reduces

a thing to a single part: he wants pussy,
by which we must infer he wants a woman.

We’ve been called so many things that we are not,
we startle at the sound of our own names.