Afraid New World

 There was no room for emergency

in the emergency room

so she settled into her car

as life emerged from her,

and then life left

her infant, too.

What were the doctors supposed to do?

If you said first, no harm

then no harm done,

but that math isn't fooling

anyone. It's attention diverted

from the harm of inaction

when fear has gained traction

and pro-life is merely

forced birth,

and such births will happen anyhow

and that the baby died doesn't matter

to the screamers now-

having happened in a car

not a clinic.

Call me a cynic, but if you call this 

an act of God, or

an act of fate,

I would say no--it was the state

that barred the door

that tied the hands

that choked the heart

that buried the child, 

all mummified in red tape. 

Tape as red as blood. 

The Chase

 It's time for this ritual again

as the quarry has appeared,

moving out in the rough like

a jewel--I have seen them

like pure white elk or

perfect red heifers or

an ebony doe, streaking

free and unminded

and then brought down

by a thousand arrows:

or at least, by Heaven! 

the men will try.

Every one of them an attempted sacrifice

to the withered limb of a 

bitter little god with a face

like a dried-out apple.

Powerful witches who had to be

stopped, lest their magic shrink men

to the size they want women to be.

The hunters shout after them: "Medusas! Jezebels!"

as they watch the desired prey,

uncovered hair waving like

tired snakes threatening to snatch

these sorry heroes like

fish in a net. They cry like dogs, 

sent raving mad after a 

flaming brush disappearing into a field--

until the grass itself is set afire

with her brilliance.

They could never hold what they intend to catch;

but they would see it destroyed.

My Identity is Not in Your Mouth

 Your definition is not for

my liberation

for every time I've been defined

it was to leave pieces 

of myself behind

and make boundaries where

I could not be.

No one has any right

to go around

defining me.

Define the shape of my lotus feet

and narrow me with whalebone.

Tell me I need to be escorted

with some kind of chaperone.

Deny me banking--

deny me cars.

Give me a separate entrance

into bars. 

Deny me jobs, bastardize my kids--

these are the results of the 

"defining" you did.

Choked with a halo,

burdened by wings--

women have been circumscribed

by the definition of our things. 

The size of our breasts,

the cut of our lips, 

the swell of our asses

and the width of our hips--we've been

callipered to excess for

our callipygyny by scientific tongs

and measured like 

an anatomy of wrongs.

Our literal clitori a mystery, our G-spot a

Shangri-la, our existence supposed to be

babies,

who knows whatever else for? 

Don't ask the definition of

what you would rather not even face--

Human.

Just fucking human. 

And don't get me started on race.

The Limit Does Not Exist

 To those who would say 

this love is not 

(in your mind) 

a love divine,

what measurement did you use 

to fathom the heart--

either of God's,

or mine?

For I would go

on bended knee to the one I love,

but for you

I would not crawl.

And I would give my life

to the one I love

and care nothing for your words

at all.

If I would fight with angels,

what might I fear from the words

of men?

If I would lose the world for my love--

what of love could you say then? 

My love more visible in deeds

than in the salty tears of spite

of those who claim that love is not right

denying the basic needs

of those to love and be loved.

We are enough for that,

and survive the risks--

those that limit love must learn-

the limit does not exist.

What You Are

 I am defining myself for myself

and not for your easy use

and handling.

My definition takes up pages

and increases while

I take up space.

When you define

some corner of me

to try and grab me whole,

it tells me less about me

than it does about

what you are.

The Ghosts of Fallen Women

My head is always beset
with the visions of fallen women
bloody in hotel rooms,
murdered at home,
lying in ditches,
traduced and betrayed,
in Magdalene Laundries,
on coroner's gurneys,
throwing themselves downstairs,
taking pennyroyal oil
and bleeding,
bleeding,
dying for days.

These living women
haunt my conscience,
these girls who shrieked
their labor songs in chains,
or were jailed for dropping
their gifts like stones,
who threaded the path between
their addictions
and the health of two,

who took beatings knowing they
did not
take those beatings alone.

My mind is haunted
with the knowledge of gifted women
happy in motherhood
blessed with strength
privileged in many ways--
and they remind me also
of these so many ways
the freedom to bear
means everything.

And that the freedom to choose
one's life, and
the freedom over one's body,
and the triumph
of the once-"fallen"
is the only redemption I give a damn about.
For the sake of the dead and gone,
for the sake of the here and now,
and for the sake of those
to be.

Only choices
let my
women be free.

The Scar

Between each hip
the scar runs
crosswise
beneath the navel,
an abdomen bisected
by the blade
to take out
so many pounds of flesh;
as once flesh itself
cut her
below the navel,
her life
bisected
to idly insert
new life within.

Those who never saw
nature's bloody claw
will never see that scar,
for the modesty we give
children
will leave it, for them,
veiled in a mystery.
But those who know
that bite and scratch living
and the pain that throbs in
the vital thrust

that drives the arteries and
the veins and muscular torsion
of all our mammal descent into
life know
this reminder will always stay.
This is the nature of such scars.
One beneath the navel
to go with the half-remembered
cut between the legs.
The incision where
a decision was made
for her
because her body
was too small to protest
and too small to comply.

This reminder will always be
a line to the first
brutal time, and every
brutal time confronted
with the link
her body helplessly
formed in a fear made flesh
and brought into this world
with the violence
doubled.

A connection to that man.
To his rights.
A gift to him
of fatherhood
unwillingly given
from her who was
called his
sometime child?

And as for well-wishes
and congratulations?
I wish those who made this happen
also wear a scar
being far more culpable for all
that transpired,
dear child,
than you are.

These children,
mother and child--
neither to be shamed
but in no argument
where "consequence"
is spoken of
can it be separated from
the moral frame.
That she "must" suffer
the curse of Eve--
her child,
(although one hopes not)
a mark of Cain.

I could wish you both a better world than this--
this one is always less than safe,
and has a logic worse than sane.

Her Body: Graveyard

The first time at twenty-five
I felt the child inside me alive
until the cramp and blood--
the violent ending,
of my unsung son.

And the second time,
she barely registered--
a missed period, a test,
and I guessed,
maybe yes--this time
I'd fight my biology.
But I fought nausea
and in tears knew
how quickly
she
ceased to be.

My hard-fought fertility
has taken me from
the bed to the ER
to doctors and the spare
couch where I have sat,
paging through unaffordable options,
to have
just one, adorable child.

So tell me,
when this one dies,
if it dies, under my heart,
when do I start to heal--

with a surgical finish
and a promise that we will meet again?
Or will some
jumped up motherfucker
make me leave his little
bones
joined in me until the
rush of
thankless labor
some days off
let me unburden the ghost
of another child I did not have?

Make my heart a
stone,
and inscribe there
their names unwritten
for what your laws will make
of my potters' womb.

A monument to death in me.
My life a tomb
for your
purity.


After this.

Her Body Migrant

They wanted her
here--
there,
back down,
thirteen,
no hope,
prisoner
used, traded.
Tool.

Dreams:
nightmares only.
Freedom denied
and penetration
guaranteed.
Stolen life
a story
of transit-points
and bargains
and sometimes,

she was the chip.

This seed
that tastes like shame

holds a body in bounds,

and would you dare bargain for her
freedom with indifference to her
life--and

not call this thing "rape"?

Make her body the place
you sink in your
staff and wave your
merry flag? A fish and a cross?

Fuck yourself.

Her body is her proof.
Let her have her freedom.

And leave your beady little conscience
to its worrying stones.
She bore her cross
why should she bear
a crown of thorns?

Her body is not your business to shame
but the burden you
need
to know.

And if you do not dare--
speak no more of her fate
anywhere,
slink down from your place;
for you have no right to
judge
what you would
not face.
Her body,
and the sanctity of its life.

Mona Eltahawy's "Sekhmet's Tits"

The poem is found here--Sekhmet's Tits.

I have been a fan of Eltahawy's reporting for awhile, but her poem strikes me with its provacative language and juxtaposition of sexual and violent images. And I have been in love with Sekhmet as a poetic image for some time--the lioness breath of the goddess is a source of strength and an image of aggressive feminist aspect. The use of popular song lyrics ties the ancient image of the warrior-goddess and the age-old clash of love and war to the present. It's a palimpsest--even the lyric from Oasis: Gonna start a revolution from my bed--calls to mind the Beatles' Revolution and John Lennon's bed-in. Which calls to mind Lysistrata's strike.  Except here we are with a new configuration--"Make Love, Not War", evolves to Making Love as a kind of War.  A better one. A war of healing.

The backstory of Sekhmet is that she is the Eye of Ra, poured out on the desert to destroy people because they displeased the gods. Her breath created the desert. Ra tricked her into ceasing her bloodlust by dyeing the Nile with wine, so that she would think it was blood, but would be made drunk on it. Once drunk with the wine, she became an aspect of Hathor, and fell in love with Ptah, the creator god. In this story, a goddess goes from uncontrolled wrath to a benign goddess. We have a picture of an entity capable of  "creative destruction" who tears down and rebuilds. This makes her a figure ideal for comtemplating healing from a destructive event, as the poet depicts.

The evocative language, referring to her pussy and tits, strikes me as intended to shock those who would be shocked by reference to perfectly natural female body parts. They are perfectly natural, and the words used, the "vulgar", remind us that culturally, some people don't see the natural bodies we are given as beautiful, but unclean. The pussy is our entry into the world. The tits nourish us. But the poet is birthing a revolution from her pussy. She is nourishing herself. And she seems to do this to continue fighting for herself. And that is a beautiful construction right out of feminism--the urgency of self-care. Because the disregarded self is a house on fire--like the wrathful Sekhmet, it leaves a desert in its wake. But pacified with love, the self makes a new path.

Maybe I'm taking my reading too far. Eltahawy admits herself she wrote this rather quickly, but sometimes deep meanings in poetry come across just like that. In any case, I found the poem meaningful to me, and it struck a lot of notes in my mind.