Woman Of The Year

Sylvia Hawthorne-MacNaughton opened a can of whoop ass,
but it must have been expired, or something, because
nothing happened.

There she was, in the girls' bathroom, quiet as a church,
still as a mountain spring at midnight,
and boy, did she feel stupid.

She went on to be given a swirly by a pimple-faced girl with stick arms.
She went on to become a lexicographer.
She went on a long trip to Tibet, having lost her faith in the order of things.

Who is Sylvia, what is she, the peace movement's fairest darling?
The number one non-violent nun of the year,
the fruit that fell from the fuck-up tree?

All her life, Sylvia Hawthorne-MacNaughton resents that moment,
when the can of whoop ass let her down.
Seven presidents and prime ministers attend her funeral at age 92,

Droning on and on about what a beacon she was, and blah-de-la.
She would have gladly traded it all to have stuffed stick girl head-first
into the trash basket, when she was fifteen,

With her own plan for her life, before God hijacked it
and turned her into Woman Of The Year, holier than Jesus, nicer than Santa Claus.
________
 

In Autumn

In Autumn, when my love, my unparticular love
with a dozen faces was leaving--as she is always leaving--
in Autumn, when my heart is forever about to fall--but never falls--
I bought the scent of the season of endings, like an acolyte believing.

Blue, blue, songs are like tattoos, as the lady said.
In Autumn I coccoon myself wrapped in pages where I hope to find
the Neruda or the Dickinson that will assuage this feeling
that seeps like leaf-smoke through my dreams, my grief, my mothy mind.

Now, it is rain-green June, and the vines climb outside my window
as if they saw God above them, or hungry devils below.
My heart is easier when the light is longer, though solitude is still solitude;
darkness waits as it always waits, though I love to fool myself just now, just so.

And my Knight in his armor, plucked from a rank of defenders
off the shelf at Target? He is still here, stoic and ready, aromatic and constant.
It is always Autumn inside him, a high wind residing unseen behind his pose.
Together we make two seasons, skeletal, but telling each other we are verdant,

Each filling the indifferent air with our manufactured ode;
me ever the lady and pregnant, hefting that bale, hauling that load.
______

Karin Gustafson over at Real Toads, urges us to write an ode to the quotidian. I can't imagine many things more quotidian than a can of air freshener. She suggested looking around at one's desk, and my eyes landed on my dear and treasured Woodside Library can of Glade scent. Leather & oak, it says on the side. So, I put my hair up in a bun so tight it makes my eyes cross, donned my glasses, and began shushing people so that i could write this poem.

The line about songs being like tattoos is from the Joni Mitchell song "Blue", written by her.

Fun fact to know and tell: women have a keener sense of smell than men. It's science!

 
 
 

Pictures of Heartbreak, Poems in the Spokes of a Wheel

Here is how I imagined my heart:
blood compromised, made thin and blue by work schedules,
thoughtless words,
kindnesses forgotten,
mad-making obstacle dreams and stale air
arriving at the right atrium like someone stumbling in out of the snow;

Received like a guest, served coffee and cookies,
surrounded by the biological greenery outside the atrium,
this blood eventually slipping through the delicate leaflets 
of the tricuspid valve into the guest room quiet of the right ventricle.

Shall I go on? Isn't it obvious, the druggy dream of the pulmonary artery,
the bloom of new love in the left atrium,
the free fall through the mitral valve into the left ventricle
with its clocks and chimes, and finally the aorta into the unknown?
This was my concept, my imagining.

Reality was this:
An endless rain, the filth of the floodwaters bringing
boards, bodies, houses, livestock and death on a black surge,
an ink to begin my poetry with.
Within my chest, the wheel, the weird carnival,

All I had ever consumed or breathed gathered in ceremony,
children being born and let go but never let go,
the shout above the wind, the wonderful stupidity of the church tower
or widow's walk in a lightning storm,
the stanzas, the strophes, the angeldust afterbirth of all I needed to say.

Go ahead, tell the one whose love you need the most
that you are dropping out of med school,
that you are bisexual,
that you have knocked over a bank and shot the President;
they may forgive you, or at least pretend to.

Finally, tell them you are a poet and watch them walk away.
Feel the flood, the fever and fire--
then, dear heart, start writing.
_______

for Fireblossom Friday at Real Toads

 

 

I love this ad

There are some people I'd love to say this to!

 

MIDWEST-4-2313

The woman who wouldn't stop talking
caused the telephone to kill itself.
For weeks after that, the operator stalked the talking woman,
fantasizing about pushing her in front of a train or a bus,
and the disturbing glee she would feel--
the drug rush of wonderful silence.

Day after day, the operator imagined scenes of accident,
murder,
the stupid woman strangled with her own tongue.

However, a repairman began paying attention to the operator.
He brought her movie tickets and hard candies;
he admired her to no end, and rarely spoke.
After months of quiet dinners and good manners at the cinema,
he tried something. She let him.

In the intimacy of afterwards, she began to confide in him.
She told him that ivy was her favorite plant, crows her favorite bird.
Further, she confessed her hatred of the talking woman to him,
and how she had been following her and planning cold-blooded murder.
He said nothing, and she loved him for it.

Unfortunately, the repairman never came by for her again.
Her number disappeared from every directory in the city,
and moving men came to take her bed away to the lunatic asylum.
With no place to sleep, and no man to confide in, she began to pace,
muttering to herself all night. 

Desperate and cracking, she appeared late one evening at the talking woman's door.
"May I use the phone?"
The woman only gaped at her, finally saying simply, "It's dead,"
but that should have been obvious, given the repair truck at the curb,
parked there for so long that ivy had begun to wind itself possessively around the axles.
______

Dialed up for Magpie #274

Book Review: "Whipping Girl"

Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity by Julia Serano

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


The recent news coverage of Caitlyn Jenner's transition seemed to rile up a certain portion of people, who harumphed and ranted and became generally apoplectic about it. Do you suppose the same degree of reaction would have happened over a born female who transitioned to male? I doubt it, and that's where Julia Serano's central theme comes in. She argues that what is often termed transphobia is actually trans-misogyny, just an extension of the society-wide overvaluing of what is seen as masculine, and the undervaluing of what is seen as feminine.

She makes other fascinating points as well, going into the issue of "gatekeepers", the medical and psychiatric professionals, nearly all of them cissexuals, who have held the key to who can transition and who can't, favoring those who will present as attractive, feminine, heterosexual women--thereby not upsetting the oppositional sexist norm--and turning away those who don't fit this model, as not being "true" transsexuals. This is not to mention the enormous cost of it all, which further reduces the number of people who can actually transition, pretty much guaranteeing that most people never meet an actual transsexual person. To vilify or dismiss a member of any group, it is enormously helpful to be able to remain separate from them. To know someone is to demystify them, making it much less likely that one will continue to dehumanize them.

Serano also goes into the splintering of various feminist and "queer" groups. Who is woman enough to be a feminist? Who is subversive enough to be genderqueer? Who gets entree to each given group, who is excluded, and doesn't that just set up a different gender binary? One thing that would have made me laugh if it were not so sad, is her depiction of feminists who speak of trans women in dismissive and even blatantly insulting terms. Now who's entitled?

Some of the book is a bit dry, in the way of The Week magazine's "boring but important" side bar. Other sections are immensely readable. Serano knows her stuff. Anyone interested in a clear-eyed and intelligent book about sexual politics and the "scapegoating of femininity" need look no further.



View all my reviews

“In a world where masculinity is respected and femininity is regularly dismissed, it takes an enormous amount of strength and confidence for any person, whether female- or male-bodied, to embrace their feminine self.”
― Julia Serano, Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity

4th of July

There were fireworks, but it might have been gunfire.
I'll stand here against the wall with an apple on my head,
just to see if anybody splits it.

Downstairs is the Chinese restaurant where silent waitresses
bring us loaded plates and little cups for tea.
You're Greek and I'm Irish, so naturally the Lucky Dragon is our balancing point.

Moving into the open-window flat upstairs was probably overkill,
but we are desperate like that, all we need is a V-8 '32 Ford and two fedoras.
Bonnie didn't really smoke cigars; reality is just a template we can fuck with.

The grifters and junkies have taken over the park down the street;
they pimp out their girlfriends and sit on the edge of the fountain all day
watching for marks. It used to be nice here. Sort of. Better than now.

With my head on your shoulder, I tell you about the war movie I saw
when I lived over there. Everybody cheered when a Jap plane went down.
Street vendors sold the most delicious warm bread, and the buses allowed chickens.

Maybe it wasn't gunfire. Maybe we're really in love.
Maybe you're not lazier than shit and maybe I'm straight after all.
Here, have an apple. Trust me, it's good for you.

I don't know it now, but I will kick this jones.
You I'll never see again after Ohio four years from now,
and the Lucky Dragon? I'll have left my 20s there. If you hock them, save the ticket.
_____

For the Real Toads mini-challenge: Marilyn Chin.