It was ironic, really, how they were always making her mix-tapes, trying to communicate through someone else’s sense of lyrical love, how they felt about her, how like a black cat, she winked at them, a curse without trying—but she would only whistle the melody, drum out the baseline on her tanned thigh winding forward and back through the compilation of obscure love songs, not really understanding what it was all about, the penned anthologies on a slip of paper, the wrapped promises of pent-up boyhood tucked in the pocket of her jeans as she pumped her legs, swinging always toward and away from the sky. 

She remembered only the melodies of things, never words or clever stage names; she did not own her songs the way other people did. Had no heartsick memories, no cinematic moments of backseat love; there were only the muffled sounds of squeaking vinyl; of frozen leaves breaking like glass against her face; the lingering hum of mosquito’s under her shirt; the lapping of water against the dock, wood smoke crackling through midnight; the faint rustling of doves in the hay stacked corners, shadow and lamplight. 

When she was fourteen, Sara would sneak to the playground, through the moonlit dirt-packed street and let the boys grab hold of the bent arms of the carousel, spinning her faster and harder, the dusty effort of footsteps running in circles, the sky a whirling universe of light, bars pressing hard into her back, cold metal smooth and rusting against her cheek.

The first time, it was Nina Simone singing, “See Line Woman” on the hill of the park, and a flower in her hair, everything smiling, soft curls, falling and falling, so close, a sliver of lightning when his hands brushed against her leg, drifting past the center of the world, having to hold on to something solid, and finding only the liquid of another body, an ocean of desire rowing her farther and farther from shore until it was too far to go back, too far to know anything but the need to swim. 

Again and again, she would drift like this, unmoored from feeling, grasping for breath. Reaching for the lines that would pull her to safety, untie the quiet knots that kept her tangled in the netting as waves buoyed her to the surface.

i could tell you about my mother,
her piano hands and boiling laughter,
who said she loved me so often I never knew
if she was telling the truth or just trying
to speak her love into existence.

i could tell you about my father,
whose silence made me guess
the origin of words and hate
the transparent fools who knew,
like the common sweetness of honey,

love. if i wrote you down, choosing
“autumnal” from the shallow well of words
it would not take you back to the woods
of my childhood, it would not let you taste
the accidental joy of chewing a dirty fingernail
just to know the taste of earth.

there would only be more dreams, more fog,
stretching in all directions, because
we can only, after all, look through glass,
reach toward the mirrored surface of ponds,
trying to know the depth of an unmeasured body,
trying to know the intense mystery of love,
the webbed dimness clinging to your face as you stumble
through morning to a sagging sheath of news,
shrugged at the end of a cracked driveway;

what can we do but follow the cool depressions
in the snowbank, walk the sled worn paths,
black tracks cutting through the tufts of grass;
what can we do but lean like potted plants
on a dusty bookcase twisting toward windows, blinded
by conventions of darkness.

it was like paddling along on a lake, each oar
reaching back up to me, the memory of limbs
breaking the surface into pieces of polished mirror
a brilliant blue curtain, seamed together by sky

now
like waves
a gentle overlapping
each flowing outward
rippling the skin
of the moon,

a shard of glass is made
from sifting the quiet grains
of sand against sand
unseen as wind wisping in long strands
against the nakedness of stone

Behind them, the red brick of their apartment building becomes small, and dark. Their footsteps make sounds in the silence. Hush, hush, hush. The girl peels back the loose bark of birch trees, kissing the raw trunk like the skin of new apples. She picks up leaves from the ground and holds them, gleaming like wet veins, on her face. She wanders alone over a small hill, spinning the stems in her fingers. A yellow canopy of leaves stops her in sunlight. The girl breathes deep, suddenly aware of solitude, and listens for the sound of her mother. She waits for what seems like years without turning, looks past the tangle of thin black limbs through to the pieces of blue, through to the clouds. Is this heaven, she asks, the unanswered question drifting between them. The woman stands still in the golden silence. She has stopped breathing. No, baby. It’s not.

she will try to tell you
about the ends of things

what she thought about
when he pulled her down

from the kitchen table
like a loaf of bread

her eyes fixed in a blue stare
while he licked the cotton

from her open stomach
hoping no one would find her

until he had finished.

 sea sublime

spectators sipped orange sodas and sucked on sliced pineapple. the boat heaved, and she hugged the rail, hopeful as she heard the ship-captain holler. she motioned a hail mary and crossed to the edge of the deck. deliberately, deb went down first. the waves licked the edge of the ship, hissing at our heels as we slipped like slick stones into the salty sea. from the fractured shipwreck, fish sent out feelers, crabs clattered into corners, the eels ogled us, opening their mouths in the filtered funnels of light. i saw her sick expression on the blue horizon and suddenly she spewed, a cloud of clownfish collected quickly. she smiled, and signaled a thumbs up in my direction, sublime.

corn cake

the babysitter’s baby threw up a cupful of corn on the carseat. she screamed, stones spattering to a halt, high heels clattered to the curb. the lumped liquid made her livid and she launched into a long monologue meaning the mess was mine to mop up. mean-faced and muttering, i maneuvered the mess into an empty fast food bag, and nursed a cruel hate for the hag until my heart hollowed. she wrung her hands and hung on the open door until the wet lump dried to a corn cake.

technicolor yawn

she cut through the costumed cackling crowd clucking her tongue, swirled up the spiraled staircase, spilling some of her drink and stepped over a sleeping siamese, stumbling and stuttering to the rooftop, clawed her way to the kerosene lamps, clutching the cool colander, clicking her heels carelessly careening correlation causation catapault.

late night t.v.

The dusty playgrounds of my youth are all the same,
daddy-long-legs and a piece of rhubarb,
the plastic fumes of water wings that would fuse together
beach balls and buoyancy for the rest of my life.

This was before some stroke of Solomon
inspired them to split me—seven days
and my world was remade, same bed different sheets;
Even now I wonder what it will sound like,
the inevitable coming together of two sides
in a child.

Will I be afraid for you, following the strip of light
that narrows to a needle, an open space left in your doorway,
winding up the lamb you take to bed, a second time
to hear the gentle tick of pins combing a lullaby
on a cylinder of steel;

The last time I run my fingers through your hair,
sparks down your spine like fireflies,
like limbs when they have fallen asleep,
will you wade to the center of a dream
searching for the doughy comfort of your mother,
pockets full of butterscotch candy,
the crack of a gun splitting you wide awake?

Will you know I have only left the television running,
across oceans of sand, a lone ranger
limping through the desert, surrounded by thieves?

Will you swim to the edge of nightmare
choking back tears when you see me solid
standing above the bed frame to kiss you;

Will you pretend, as I did, not to see
and turn your face instead to the dark window
forgetting all the rest?

a few snapshots from the garden: more flickr fotos found here.

In response to a segment of the local paper found here: click it.

Both women’s views on this question are legitimate for me, and to dismiss either outright, doesn’t give us the opportunity to really interrogate the underlying issues of this debate (if we can even call it that, given the polemic quality of our response). Since both the movement and the philosophy guide and inform each other, it seems senseless to me to try and differentiate them in this discussion.

As it has already been pointed out, the question reads: “Has feminism failed women?” While it’s valid to ask why this question does not instead say, “failed us?” we should remember that the term effectually describes what it represents, quite literally: “the theory of the political, economic, and social equality of the sexes,” or “organized activity on behalf of women’s rights and interests” (From Merriam Webster).

While Feminism does usually start out it’s inquiry from an interest in “women’s rights and interests” it often and usually extends to a question of Civil Rights, which is why these two are related. We see an instance of this in the essay, “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack,” by Peggy McIntosh (you can find a typographically sloppy version of this essay by clicking here). Through her investigation into her own thoughts on this idea of white privilege, she comes to this realization:

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As prompted from a LiveJournal post: “How is Asian different from Oriental?”

From the Wikipedia entry on Asian American: “The term “Asian American” is credited to the historian Yuji Ichioka who, in the late 1960s, used it to describe members of a new pan-ethnic radical political identity who shared common histories, experiences, and goals. In the United States, this term has widely supplanted the term “oriental” which was popularly used before the 1990s to describe East Asian peoples regardless of nationality, upbringing, or origin. Some have argued “oriental” is politically loaded and referenced a colonial “other” (see orientalism).”

We cannot feign to ignore the implications of our speech, anymore than we can pretend not to know the subtle and overt messages of our dress, our actions (and inactions), and our possessions. Distinct ways of self-identification, or self-naming, can be difficult, but not impossible, to understand. It is absolutely necessary to the health of our nation and it’s government, that we approach these ideas with respect and intelligence.

It is irresponsible to dismiss language as “confusing” or “nonsense” when we have the capacity to think deeper about how our words have power. Because we have not been marginalized in the specific way that “non-whites” are partitioned in our culture, it is hard to see and hear what is presented to us by these individuals and groups. Understandably difficult, it is vital that we are able to unveil the hidden ways we participate in a system, particularly those aspects of the system we fundamentally oppose.

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