My Friend Feminism
My friend Feminism and I
enjoy long walks on the beach together
But there is a line in the sand that always approaches
where I must let go of her hand
because I don’t think my friend Feminism
understands how she can’t wear all her faces at once
How her sisters would still not recognize her
even if she could
My friend Feminism and I stalk up and down dark streets
in our shortest skirts and highest heels
Bra straps deliberately showing over the shoulders of our sheer
crop tops, she-wolf teeth bared and ready to tear the throat
out of the first man who slavers at his mongrel-mouth
In another life, across the globe – we catch each
silent tear that pitches itself over the cliff-edge of our
nose onto our tongue named after a snowflake dream already
steaming back into the sky before one final
lap around the holy fire burns away all other
paths for us
but one
that stretches off into a dark horizon, and ends
at the stranger’s house we are to call our new home
My friend Feminism can’t avoid a hierarchy
no matter which route she chooses to reach
Destination: Equality
Turns her nose up at me for loving a man
whose kiss I taste the revolution in
like that means I don’t count anymore
Like I can’t disprove of a patriarchy to which
I’ve unwillingly lent my hammer
Like the closet isn’t still packed to the hinges
with the rest of the world
who aren’t buying her Western selling points
of why they should open the door
My friend Feminism can’t look past the almighty
wage gap at all the women whose mouths run like broken
faucets for a fraction of the salary she refuses
And that’s okay and all, but I wonder when
she’ll consider the arsenal built enough to start bridging
all the gaps in her argument
Because my friend Feminism has never had to ask herself
what it’s like to die a new death every day
in a country that hasn’t stopped bleeding since
the first oil drill snuck between her thighs and turned her
inside out
My friend Feminism is a spider
with too many legs
She cannot stand with them all on different continents
She cannot say anything without putting her foot in her mouth
And I need something better than that
Give me a feminism like a lighthouse who divvies her
shadow and beacon in equal measure
Give me a feminism willing to kneel in the dirt
Give me a feminism with broader shoulders so she can
carry a pair of wings we all fit under: those of us
pounding our bloody fists against the glass ceiling, those of us
flinging our bodies atop our abusers’ funeral pyres, who are
holding the bomb-fractured sky up over our children’s
heads, who refuse to even bring a baby into a world as
grisly as this one has become – and all of us
in between
Give me a feminism whose war cry we all listen for on the wind
Give me a feminism with enough humility to reach across enemy lines
A feminism I can be proud to rally behind
To parade her colors through the burning streets, to march forward
with into wall after wall of resistance
A feminism we don’t all have to call our friend, but one
we can look to and recognize
as our ally.
11 Years
Facebook kindly informs me
this morning that the UN-iverse has
finally stamped us with a
semi-official expiration date
Now, we all know Facebook
spreads a lot of fake shit
But I couldn’t help considering what
cold calculation they’ve come up with
for how long we have left:
11 years –
hardly more than a decade longer
before our poor Earth
turns on us
And yet, nobody is terrified
Nobody seems as shocked as
I am to have such little time
Of course, I have been
expecting the apocalypse
A backpack beneath my bed
filled with matches, a change of clothes,
a knife I’ve never unsheathed
But I guess I just didn’t expect it so soon
11 years –
what a stark figure to hold
our faces over the hot coals of finitude
What a devastatingly short amount of time
left to spend with you
when I was counting on at least forever
When the black hour tolls, promise
you’ll pick the ash from my hair too
Promise we’ll hold each other
through nuclear winter
If all we have are another 11 good years
left together, I promise
not to let one snowflake moment of them
pass without savoring the honey it melts to
on my tongue
I promise I won’t ever let go
of your hand
Even as the seas inch in around us
to swallow the land
Even as the last glacier
steams into the sky
Even when the sun explodes
and melts our bones to a puddle of wax
for standing too close
If the last thing to pass before my eyes
after the great flash is our
quiet life together, then
at least I know
there will be no pain
If we must go,
let it be at the same time
Let us find one another
on the other side, and spend the rest of our
robbed infinity among the stars
as bits of rubble
orbiting the black hole we both
once called home.
To Hygeia
(after David Mason)
Goddess,
I’m sure you are surprised to find my candle
already at your altar. Surely I have more years
to go before my ritual offerings begin? Well if I’ve
learned anything from my elders, a head start
can’t hurt – for nothing follows without you.
And isn’t it the disheartening truth? Billions of years
of evolution and yet, what persists to betray us
in the end but our own bones and blood?
I can still remember how it felt to be a child: privileged
to be blissfully ignorant of death’s unrelenting gravity –
surrounded by adults whose fruitless attempts to realize it for me
became blank noise in the background of my entire childhood,
until the day I could make out their voices again. And suddenly
something that was never able to touch me pressed its
cold finger to my soul.
It was then I learned of all the things lurking within and
without that would happily kill me. Then that I learned
of all the others – bent inside by unseen alligators. And
suddenly my life became a very fortunate stumble
through the swamp so far.
I think of them every time I launch from my springboard
knees, or my cracked vertebrae snap back into place like
rubber bands, when my lungs balloon full of high-altitude
air rather than shrivel with shortness of breath, my unfaltering
heart pumping in my chest like a steam engine.
I think of them more and more now that I am in love
with the one I’ll be buried beside. Now that the only thing
between us and eternity is the inevitable expiration of these
hopeless animal bodies.
O Hygeia, please, let it not come early for either of us.
Taking one just to leave the other here would be a
waste of good health. I will never again overlook the
blessing it is to grow old, how only the most fortunate
get to know the wisdom of age. Even more blessed are those
who learn it together – O let us be so lucky.
In return, goddess, I’ll give you everything: Toast you
at every meal I attend by your grace from now on. Dedicate
to you my every prayer and poem (which are really one
and the same) until the day my hands are too twisted to hold a pen,
press palm to palm, or raise my ringing glass.