Tag Archives: woman

Bonfire for E.

14 Saturday Mar 2020

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welcome enter
how did we find each other
doesn’t matter
our candles burn the same

i am crone in the cave naming
sea life remains
one long tide at a time.

the mother of me sees the mother of you
i have balm for that.
you are still spring and fight
where I am retreat and ruminate

the world is blind at night,
but for a little moon
we are unsafe on the waters
and deepest african shores
still we prowl, seeking danger

we are eating and drinking and laughing
when we should be
writing
writing
writing

when next you see me, darling
bring your book and your pen
refuse all distraction
enter the cave hungry and wet
and longing

bring basil and pepper and vinegar
ghost pepper
empty cask
bring your longing and prepare to
dash it on the rocks
fearless woman, rise up
stain your fingers with woe
and love and find liberty.

Isn’t All Poetry Confessional?

30 Wednesday Oct 2019

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They had to call it something.  Everything has a label, has to have a label otherwise it cannot be understood?
Things cannot be as they are, they must be classified and microfisched for further review by busybodies who write the law.

I wanted an MFA tag, but that’s fruit from the Tree of Knowledge (of)  
I refused to pay the price.
‘stead I carry pomegranates in my apron
I never share them because that would be truth-telling, that would be
the real deal.
Who wants to hear more sylvia plath confessionals
yet another unhappy woeman
writing names in the sand
counting down?

I would rather have been Mary Oliver in the end
some kind of smooth stone you keep in a mason jar
or a sassy fawn named for a childhood friend
the one who still carries the North star

or better,
a body carved with hieroglyphs of the sea
wrapped in a Robert E. Howard shroud, epically 

or simply

e e cummings
      free

A Hymn for You.

15 Saturday Dec 2018

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No one was looking for you, but I guess I was meant to find you. 
It happens sometimes when you’re adventurous, curious, 
spelunking in roadside limestone caves or shuttered buildings
nobody has any business being in, but we go. 
Dare, we go. 

I want to believe that if I sprinkled water onto your bloodstain
shadow on the cement floor I could reconstitute you,
I could bring you back to us so I could know your name. 

No one was looking for you, but I guess I was meant to find you. 
Somebody’s daughter. Maybe somebody’s mama caught up in 
the life. They brung her down here for trade, 
you can tell because the torn condom wrappers say “ribbed for her pleasure.” 

The reconstituted you tells me you don’t know why things went wrong,
it was supposed to be a simple cop, but it turned into
something else she hardly cared about,
it would be over soon
and there was no reason to bring out the knife
she assures me. She was only fake fighting back, after all. 

She slides back down into her bloodstain 
her body taken wherever they took, quiet again. 
She bears no wounds of the holy martyr, pierced in the side by 
fated centurion, followers capturing the flood in a cup
prepared to write hymns for her future. 
She was only ribbed for your pleasure. 

I gathered wildflowers whose names I do not know. 
I knelt in a field and…
Maybe I’ll let you know when I’m ready to let them go. 

Some Thoughts On Kavanaugh v Ford, though it could be more but you ain’t got time.

28 Friday Sep 2018

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Mom handed me a small hardcover book one day. I can’t remember what year it was, or what room I was in.  I think I was in apartment 3F. She asked me to read these pages, which I did, and she said ask me any questions, which I didn’t, and the whole thing was done.  That’s how I learned about how men get on top of women and they gently rub against one another and some things are exchanged and a baby grows in the woman.  I remember, after reading, feeling kind of weird. Like, the book being presented to me came out of nowhere. I recall feeling like, “Okay….” but not much more.
Probably when Mom presented me with this book when I was in the 5th grade, still in Catholic school, and I can still remember having the best make-outs with someone whose name I shall not say.  Wow.  Maybe Mom knew I was growing and having feelings and probably making out with somebody and thought the birds and the bees talk was appropriate.  I had no idea what to do with his incredible kissing, I had no idea that it can sometimes lead to sex which leads to babies. I had no idea that I was valued and important. All I knew in those 5th grade days was that I had to go to school, that I was picked on for having ugly shoes, socks, and haircut, that I was punished, humiliated in the halls for failing math, and yeah, we had some good times with our friends playing in the courtyard in the back.

Mom sat me at the table one day. It was daylight and we were 60 miles north of the place we used to live, far from the old bullies, but other battles were raging.  I don’t recall how the conversation began but she told me that if I ever got in a situation, I shouldn’t scream “rape” because no one would help. She said I should scream “fire” because everyone would react.  She said if I got in a situation I should say I have some kind of disease and not to do this so you don’t get that disease too, or I have my period.   I don’t remember what year it was or what lead up to that. I guess she figured since I was dating she assumed that heavy petting would be involved which of course leads to sex.  She also told me if I come home pregnant she would break both my legs.  So.  My sexual education wasn’t great. It left me to my own devices, and I made a lot of mistakes. I will never forget the humiliation of my parents reading my diary from when I was in college that detailed beautiful lovemaking with my boyfriend at the time.

Questions. Statements. Humiliation.  Does this sound familiar to you, woman and man? Did your parents leave you to your own devices to figure out the sex thing? Who taught you who to say no or yes about sex? About pubic hair and periods and condoms and consent?

At 1:30EST there will be a vote in the Senate to confirm Brett Kavanaugh as the next Supreme Court Judge.  I’ve followed everything the Trump administration does and his nomination is no exception.  Judge Brett did not impress me because he did not say he would uphold Roe v Wade. He’s been demure about his Bush years. Dr. Ford’s testimony didn’t help much, either.

What this brings to these morning thoughts are more questions than answers.  Is this the sea change we needed to help women stop staying silent and speak out against their assaulters and abusers?  Are more men willing to listen and believe a women when she says she was assaulted?  Will more women come forward and report their rapes and abuse and their testimony be taken seriously? Will families take this moment and use it as an example to teach their boys not to grope and seek gratification and laugh at a person who can’t say no?  Will families take this moment, no matter how embarrassing, to tell their boys don’t force, grope, assault, abuse women, and tell their girls you are loved and you matter and I believe you?  Will we tell our girls you don’t have to kiss that boy or put your hands in his pants or let him do what he wants because it affirms you.  Is this the moment where we tell our children that it’s natural to be attracted and to want, but forcing ourselves on each other is inexcusable?   Will this be a sea change?   I don’t know.  Dr. Ford was assaulted. Judge Kavenaugh says it wasn’t him. Their testimonies were emotional and believable.  This is a teaching moment for all of us and we should take advantage of it.  Teach our daughters their worth, that they won’t be abandoned if they have sex or, worse, raped. Teach them, your face to his face and her face, not in some book the facts of the human body, natural attraction, but to reject force, and to support our girls if peer pressure led them to sexual acts they weren’t ready for and regret, and reinforce our boys the difference between want–attraction–and force, assault.

Support your children with facts. Support your children with the law. Support your children with love.  If you only give them a teaspoon of each, they’ll wind up in a dark hallway giving handjobs because it affirmed them or on their backs because  privilege says this is not a crime.

My mom didn’t know how to do this and I’m betting neither did hers.  Generations told their daughters to be ladylike and polite. Poised. Accepting.  Is this the moment when we can stop a generational fault and teach our sons that it’s not okay to grope, assault, and abuse women, to respect them as equals, and our girls that they are more than help-meets, that we are curious, intellectual, scholarly, strong, brave, and that we matter?

All Your Birthday Are Belong To Us

11 Wednesday Apr 2018

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you would never believe how big you can be
until your bellybutton turns inside out.
you would never believe how much pain you can take
(your mission, should you decide to accept it)
until you accept it, knowing
the pain train was coming,
ready to deliver a full body-blow
that you’d forget it like nothing,
all that stretching and bursting a shadow
a breeze on a mountain you left below
like the chat you made with the guy who
tattooed “always” on your tender skin
or the reason you put it there.

you would never believe how much you can figure out
curled up on a towel in the dark,
a hard plastic piece in somebody’s endgame,
you become your own mother
when you figure out the gore will stop when it’s ready
and not a minute before
like it does sometimes
so sweat it out, sister,
allow yourself a whimper, walk the floor
you ain’t dying though it feels like you’re birthing the whole damned world
tonight.

you would never believe that the body can shut off the faucet
a freaking morning miracle that you can breathe pain-free now
the clot-o-rama paused
courtesy of healthy organs the doctor said he would never remove
because you are fifty and want a reprieve
but you get what you get and you don’t get upset because
there are one hundred more birthdays waiting to burst through
before this is done.

Pacifice et nimis incommode morior

05 Tuesday Dec 2017

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Another day of life, another day I get to choose. Hold on, let me light some sage and pace the floor and forsake the waiting page because I’m not ready yet. Willing, able, but not ready to commit words to page, creating something from nothing.

Another day of life, another day I get to choose not to hate, to clench my jaw, to think and feel and say terrible things though you surely earned it.

Another day I get to give up. To throw in the towel. To say fuck it, nothing matters. (Insert leaping rainbow dolphin meme here.)  Another day to despair and ask, “Why do I give a shit? What’s the point? I’m wasting my time and energy. A woman’s voice does not matter and will never be heard.” Another day to wallow, to feel helpless, to watch things not go my way, to watch sufferings and wrongs that cannot be curtailed by the wave of my wand that means well, but has the exact power of a mythical unicorn. Another day to spend in tears because the child hurts, the women hurt, the world hurts, and can I point to anything at all I have done or have yet to do that will make real, lasting change?

Another day to to choose hedonism in favor of being in this world because wouldn’t I rather just live on Vanuatu and never give another flying fuck about this world ever again? My tick tock clock is countdown calling, and wouldn’t it just be better to surrender to the good life, a life of living moment to moment without sadness for the past or fear of the future, just hand to mouth and embrace that dirt nap when it comes in volcanic soil, without caring that I never had a soul to begin with? It’s just easier believing we are a parasite on a rock, hakuna matata, the end.

Another day to acknowledge the pain in my bones and my skin when I hear that no one believes the women, another day to acknowledge the betrayal of all I hold sacred if I turn my back on us. Another day of life to not give up on doing what’s right. To choose action, to speak out, to make a stand, to do what’s right, parasite or no.

Men and women are different. The guys have the upper body strength, but women have the gift of stamina. We keep going. You and I wouldn’t be here if we didn’t keep up with you all those colicky nights. No matter the shit or the threats, the bruises or the cum on our dresses, our fear to speak honestly because “No,” or “I will have,” “I deserve,” “I need” equals “No one will believe you,” women find ways to keep going.  And if I curl up and say fuck it and stay in my bed and wallow and wait for the soil then how could I ever deserve to requiescat in pace? I know that right now the few are running the world for the rest of us. Lying down and letting them steamroll us hurts our daughters and sons in ways that’s hard to see when we don’t know where dinner is coming from, but we must never give up. It’s hard to see a better future when we’re unbelieved today, but we just  have to keep going.

Another day of life to choose to keep going.

Sexist Me

21 Tuesday Nov 2017

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In 1984, at the age of sixteen, I heard about female genital mutilation.  I was horrified and angry, but I had nowhere to share this information or how I felt, no way to make a change. People at home were too busy fighting, and everyone at school was all about everything you can imagine going on in high school. Horrified, angry, and helpless make for flinty bedfellows. I internalized and built me a case for hating men.

In 1991, five years after I graduated from high school, Anita Hill testified that Clarence Thomas, supreme court nominee, sexually harassed her.  I thought she was brave for coming forward, I believed her, and after he was confirmed my hatred for men accelerated.  How could anyone let this pig become a judge?  (Side note: I didn’t even understand at the time that he would be a judge for a lifetime and what that meant, or how his wife’s politicking everyone ignores.)

Four years later, 1995,  I married my best friend. My high school years and many after did nothing to help me learn and grow into becoming the best person I could be. I was a man-hating woman hell-bent ready to punish everyone and everything who brutalized women. I. Won’t. Be. Your. Victim. Anymore!!!   Those years were tumultuous, years without a strong support system. I hated men less because my husband was kind, but the lurking vigilante shadow was never far away, and I did little to banish it.

In 1998 my son was an infant, and I was enmeshed in the daily life of being wife and mother.  I kept up with the news in a fairly background noise kind of way.  I heard that Clinton was being accused and dragged to court and impeached for lying under oath. Well that was stupid, Bill, what the hell were you thinking?  I heard the woman he was with was a willing, if not eager, partner, and I gave him a pass.  What?   Yes.  I gave him a pass.  He seemed like a charming dude, really good on camera whether it was an address or a spot on a talk show.  I mean, how could a dude who seemed so decent (yes, he had a dalliance and he’s all humbled by it) be the predator these other women and politicians made him out to be?  I felt like the women coming forward were the unfortunate victims of those who had a political axe to grind.  I felt like, if Hillary stood by him, why shouldn’t I?  I gave Bill Clinton a Democratic pass because he favored the same things I did, he was charming, and I was not paying attention to the deeper, more relevant, issues.

Twenty-eight years after I graduated high school, 2014, I found myself in the lobby of a hospital waiting to visit my son.  I picked up a copy of Vanity Fair which I don’t normally read, but this issue caught my attention.  I read about Monica Lewinsky’s life after the scandal.  The focus of the article was humiliation and bullying. 2014 was a pivotal time for me in so many ways, and this article was part of it.  Ms. Lewinsky describes her life after the scandal and her hopes for what women need to do going forward.  Monica had been a throwaway for me. She was a willing participant in an affair, so what, let’s move on. After reading the article I learned how wrong I was.

In October of 2016 I became enraged and sickened by the words of a president-elect caught on tape. I looked forward to his sad-faced confession and withdrawal from the race, but that did not happen.  People did not seem to care that he admitted to groping women without their consent, enjoying it without fear of retribution because when you’re famous you can get away with it.  The Narcissist-in-Chief is our president, and I mourn every day.

It is November 2017 and I am questioning everything I know about myself as a woman and everything I believed right up until this day.  Three women accused Bill Clinton of rape or misconduct. No one cared. Sixteen women came forward to describe being abused by Trump before his inauguration. No one cared.  Harvey Weinstein was exposed, a tap was opened and it appears the floodgates are breached. Every day more women and men are coming forward to share stories of their abuse by the famous and the unknown.  As I sit back in amazement at the revelations I cannot help but look at myself for being complicit.  I gave Bill Clinton a Democratic pass, ignoring the women he abused. Should I give that same treatment to Al Franken because his sins were not that big a deal? Why turn my back on Roy Moore but not Charlie Rose?

The harder we put men’s bad behavior under the microscope, the harder I take a look at myself, the closer I listen to my internal tape recorder. I am shocked by what I find. I read a female journalist’s book and in several places I felt annoyed and frustrated that she was complaining about her hair, or her choice to give up her relationship and comfortable life in exchange for face-time on air covering a presidential candidate. I heard my inner voice saying to the cashier where I buy groceries, “Geez, lady, would it kill you to smile?”  I am sexist just like all the rest, but at least now I know it and I am willing to work hard to do better. I no longer want to exercise vigilante justice under the cover of my superpower, invisibility.  I know now that knowledge is power, and so is my voice. I have to stand up and speak out equally for what is right, instead of giving a pass to the folks I kinda like because they’re cute or funny on a talk-show.  Justice looks so different to me now. I hope my voice will add geometrically and make a real, lasting change.  I pray for equal vision, equal treatment, and an open heart and mind always.

Who Are You

05 Tuesday Sep 2017

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doula, catching newborns in your hands after trudging miles in the snow collecting data of an earth so very old

husband who drove so many roads, tired of Christian books on tape they sell in the truck stops

officer whose pale son is skraeling, but you love him all the same, watching him cough and wheeze while he vapes in the shade

son who sports the sigil of darkness, too lost, too tired, too lazy to find goodness in the blessing of his hands

body in the sand, shot at close range and dumped because he couldn’t pay for his own bad news

father, born late, naked and gnarled because he gave all his shirts away

lady who wears a black vinyl cape, sandals, nothing more, watching us behind her secret door

woman who writes by candlelight, looking for truth and finds reckoning

Growing Up

09 Wednesday Aug 2017

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Interesting things happen when people put their confidence in you.  Suddenly you have to perform. I’ve heard Hollywood stars say, “Fake it ’till you make it,” and that resonates. I think most of us do the same daily, because our ancestor, that shadowy Prometheus, pushes us out of our comfort zones into the hallways we’ve wanted all our lives. We’ve got the fire, we stole it from on high and now we’re not sure what to do with it, but by god we’re not going to give it up.   Sometimes the hallways aren’t the dream we dreamed they would be, and that’s all right. We find ourselves in new lands, new challenges, successes and failures await.  Will we fight or will we succumb?

I must have asked my coworkers how to get to the building in Manhattan where the boss was sending me. I’m not sure he believed in me, but he assumed I was capable of finding my way in the garment district. I was happy that he thought I was capable, perhaps I’d esteemed myself at the front desk and I wanted to continue to perform and elevate myself in the company.  There was no internet for me to ask, like some kind of Magic 8 Ball or Medusan cauldron how to get around. I was still living at home but had my own car, and I had to figure out Manhattan on my own.  Best I can recall I told mom I’d call her when I got there at some point, as cellphones and Android were not available.  I got there somehow by the Beacon train and walked some blocks to their building, excited to be dressed fairly fashionably (for a country mouse, anyway), walking around like I knew what I was doing, smelling the smells, observing everything hungrily, and warily. In the office, I observed the goings-on, ate their delivered subs with relish, no pun intended and made small talk. They gave me very little to do. I got home somehow and the next day was interviewed by the boss.  He didn’t send me there to observe the office so I could become a fixture there, something I was hoping for. It appears that I was a spy, a weak one, nothing more, telling him what was going on while he was away. I told him what he wanted to know, then he put me back into my receptionist chair where I felt weak and ineffectual.  I wanted to climb higher, all that ambition without internet or cell phone. Well. I left his company eventually because I was tired of cleaning the bathroom, pitting dates, repackaging soaking, stinking apricots, and dealing with a zealous employee.

I drove to Omaha last July because I wanted to (and for many reasons.) I laugh now thinking about how we relied on his magic talking box to help us find a restaurant nearby.  God, the soaking Blue Ridge parkway in West Virginia, steaming after the rain….  I drove through Tennessee and Alabama so I could see what makes this world, my world. I am grateful for GPS to get me through the wrong turns I made. My spiral-bound road atlas is large and I’ve traced pink lines across the places I’ve been so far.  I drove those lines without calling momma for directions or my dad for anything.

I’m faking it until I make it as a person. A woman. A writer.  And I’m not ashamed to say it.

Of Gemini, Vanilla, and Truth

11 Sunday Jun 2017

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It’s the dog-walking hour, the hour before the sun takes your breath away. It’s the hour of elderly neighbors standing on the sidewalk telling naughty jokes, or breakfast with a neighbor before church lets out so we are guaranteed a seat in the cafe.

And now is the writing hour, the time before my gumption heads for a sofa and a dogeared book, the hour that I will stand barefoot on the cement balcony to watch neighbors go by with their groceries or work on their next hangover before they deploy, thinking about things I cannot repair or undo with a swish of my wand.

Nothing is the same as it was last year on this spit of land, least of all me.  The beach is wide and flat now. Neighbors are missing and favored dogs have passed away. New dogs and new neighbors have come.  But always, the pastel sky and the wonder of the wheel is present. I opened a journal to read where my heart was on this day last year. Nothing is the same, as it should be, but some things I still carry forward I see.

Today would have been Mom’s birthday, a Gemini through and through. She wouldn’t appreciate that pagan description, but oh well. One thing you could count on with Mom: you never knew who you were getting in a day.  Her moods shifted quickly, and I wonder now if the happy happy joy joy sing-song Mom was for real or just one way she masked her pain? Or maybe both? I will never know, and that’s okay.  But in those days, watching her devolve from parent to child trapped in a desperately lonely life frightened me.  She used to sit at the kitchen table paging through a big Sears catalog picking out rugs and clocks and furniture that she said would look great in the house she imagined. These were not casual musings.  It was hard feigning pleasant conversation about how this rug would go with that sofa, hey how about this one, but I couldn’t tell her I didn’t want to be part of her game.

It’s funny how you can pick up pretty seashells to keep or share, or pick up grocery bags full of cigarette butts, plastic bags and bottles from the same spit of land: the ocean just coughs up more of both every day.  I have two good hands that can manage both, and I struggle to remember this.  Sometimes I feel a very distinct two of me, truly torn, and on those days I worry for my spirit.  I recognize the gentle, rational, creative me and then there is the angry, fightful one, and often the angry one wins, the one that cannot handle the song Hallelujah.   I forget that I have the ability to manage whatever the world throws at me with both hands.  It’s the reason I don’t reply to most social media posts, or the reason I give you one word responses: Momma said if I don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all.  Well.  On those Two-of-me days I want to create new social media sites where I give myself permission to vent and rant and troll the trolls, to hate the hate– a “safe” place to curse the darkness instead of being the light.   On those days, it is easy to judge others, to rage at injustice or simply complain about a visitor disparaging another person’s sweet dog.  On those days I forget I am free to seek another venue where I can return myself to kindness because anger is just too easy. Now, I am not wrong to feel pissiness, anger, or the rage, just as I am not wrong to want the peace that lives in me, that wells up and allows me to cry.  But feeling the peace, the beauty, the truthful good, when it wells up wide and deep, it often makes me feel overwhelmed and afraid.  It nudges out the anger, my protective shield:  how can I face you, or anything, anyone, naked?  I feel like a piece of beached jellyfish that everybody pokes with a stick or scoops up and tosses back into the ocean.  Most days, for the sake of my peace, I will show you some calm vanilla, a quiet void of non-words. On the days I don’t feel torn in two, when I feel strong and whole, viable and certain, useful and creative, I can speak and write truthfully and happily from my vulnerable place.  I can manage me and you with both hands, but those days are rare, and I want something more.   So.

Here’s to weaving the All-of-me’s together, the polyester, cotton, paper, leather, seaweed, barbed wire, and spider silk together, to threading them with my glitter beads and wampum and balsa, to painting them with silver stars and onyx night, adding a touch of unobtainium, and everything will be just all right — so you and me can know who you are getting on more than any given day.