poetry + prose = power

Honestly, i was one of the womyn that was worried about the response to McCain's announcement to invite Palin to be his running mate. Both of the conventions had failed to outline any strategies for the issues i was worried about--health care, immigration, preserving choices--but the swing and shift of polls had me cynical.

Nonetheless, i was tired of hearing about it. I wanted the discussion to get past the gender obsession, expected roles, and limited focus. I was tired most of hearing what i perceived as sanctimonious incongruities. I was tired of hearing Sarah Palin say to belittle Obama, "[This] isn't a symbolic position," but seeing many continue to revel in 'breaking the glass ceiling' in their political parties.

I was forwarded an article published by Women's e-News today, and, although i still feel burnt out by this year's election and cannot see myself feeling confident in voting for either one of the candidates that are being shoved in our faces, i wanted to share it. The first portion's author claims that gender identity politics doesn't work for women of color.

"...Yes, Palin is a woman, but not the kind of woman I can easily identify with, nor can many other African American or Latina women. We are not hockey moms, and when our unmarried teen daughters get pregnant society and others often do not see it as a blessing. Rather, we are viewed as perpetuating negative pathologies...

On the issues, she might as well be George W. Bush as I can not tell the difference between the two. Although Palin has not spoken publicly about her positions on immigration, affirmative action, job and housing discrimination, school re-segregation, police-minority community relations and racial disparities in the criminal justice system, we know where her party stands on these important issues...

Perhaps the McCain camp isn't talking to African American and Latina women when they say Palin is the average American mom and woman. If they are, they have a lot of explaining to do."
--C. Nicole Mason, Ph.D.

The second portion's author goes on to note the double standard present when it comes to teen pregnancy and welfare politics.

The entire article can be found at http://www.womensenews.org/article.cfm/dyn/aid/3738.

But, i'm still left wondering why Biden isn't getting attention/scrutiny/worry like this? After all, he was the one who said regarding "his" drafting of the Violence Against Women act, "[Feminists] were more concerned about the choice and gender issues. While others talked, I got it done." Sounds mighty like he thinks he can do things for womyn (and so many others) better than womyn can do it for themselves to me (and he apparently knows which issues are actually important *sarcasitic smirk*); and although i'm thankful for some of the legislation he has promoted, the ideals and self-parading behind it severely irritate me. Furthermore, it seems to me that Obama chose Biden for his appeal to older white men, whom Obama knew he was having trouble attracting. But who talks about that?

Bagh! I'm burned out again.

Your Result

You're Ford. Now you're one hoopy frood, aren't you? Well, you've grown tired of living on Earth, and you don't understand why people are always stating the obvious. At least you know where your towel is.

The desert becomes me.

She is sere, but deceptively so. Still and low, she hides her wellness in an arid shroud.

I go out wandering in the dusk, searching out solace in the quiet desert stillness.
If there were more places like the desert, i muse, there would be more places i would want to go.

bleached bones scattered between the sagebrush and cacti
sand swirling up and shifting
there is sheer joy in finding a tiny spring swathed in greenery nestled in the rocks
glimmering mineral deposits

out past the obvious roads and broken bottles
we ride our four wheelers to hidden junkyards full of forgotten cans, springs, and priming pumps
cryptobiotic soils, alive and well.

So, there i was waiting at the student health services to get my HbA1c tested, and i was boiling mad. (a) The night before i had been told by a comrade poet that i was a "pussy" for not wanting to go hang out past midnight at a party when i had class the next morning, and (b) i had a doctor telling me i needed to go to a diabetes educator.

So, this is the result.

I figured these were long past due.

Yea for weather changes, such as snow to rain to sleet to snow to sun. It's exciting.
Yea for homemade egg burritoes.
Nay for Dennis Kucinich dropping his bid for the presidency.
Nay for the elusive banter between the Democratic candidates, in which they failed to even address any of the questions the moderator asked directly, let alone any of my questions.
Nay to the cold i got that makes me irritable and unable to focus.
Yea to the snowpack in the mountains, even though it has stopped travel over the passes.
Yea to all the trips i have planned over the next few months. March: Lake Powell. April: Ani concert. June: San Juan Islands. July: River trips in Idaho and Utah.
Boo-yah!

Addictive 03/06 (Part II only)
"i hate you"
three words
slapped across my face
leave me destitute -
Sliced and in my case
melt me down to nothing.
This is how your love ends
in hate and disgrace.
A trip down the long concrete staircase
to the basement of your
regrets where i will sit and ferment into the
horrible wine that makes your
eyebrows knit and contorts your lips
into that awful scowl.
Wine from that same
shapely bottle that used to
intoxicate you grinning
is the same wine that you
can't throw out but instead
showcase in your cellar and label as
the bitterest sip you've ever
let touch your lips.

--------------------------------
-undated-
I'm that half-assed, half-finished version of myself.
I'm only a scrap left half-written
and half digested, i only tasted half as good.
I'm only half pretty and half nice so
only worth half your time
or only half an hour
and i'm still half forgotten
and you think you half hate me -
at least, you're only halfway sure.

----------------------------------------
06/07
-scribbled on a horizon airlines napkin-
deep seated sadness underlying two too long apart shadows...
now merging into one in the night, lips stained with a touch of wine
that opened up and got us here confessing

i - eyes spilling out months of locked up feeling

still - like the stars and night air confined

love - that word i refuse to speak unless i am overflowing with no other adjective, verb, or noun

you - the man melted down to tears and desire in front of me, that one proudof such obscuring that i always understood while still acting somewhat surprised at

too;
hey, you ventured to open the bottle.

I felt alive in the darkness
walking through the deepest puddles
soaked down to my skin in cold rain
duffle strapped my back, i was fine.

i existed, that was all that mattered
half sweating, half shivering
silent
until the headlights merged with my body
and the vehicle connected with my hip
and i cried out in pain.

a reminder, i am still mortal
and some people just don't see me.
A reminder that just existing
isn't existence enough to survive.

NOVEMBER 11 is Veteran's Day. How will you celebrate it?

I'm going to be controversial. Because the real battles of strength are the ones our veterans tend to fail at.
Commentary on War and Domestic Violence

Existentialist Feminists believe that womyn are dominated because men/males (or male-associated persons) are willing to die for "freedom", while womyn/females (or female-associated persons) are not.

The oppressed know and understand the oppressor, and the oppressor does not know and understand the oppressed, but is dependent on them.

Sara J Call
PHL 417
28 October 2007

Affirming All Women
While I was in high school I purchased a book by Rebecca Walker titled “to be real”. It contains dozens of essays by many different people describing definitions of feminism. I found that it, more than any outlined feminist theory or ideology, empowers me to believe in the strength and sisterhood possible through feminism, in its many and diverse forms brought alive through women all over and around the world. Big names, like Naomi Wolf, bell hooks, Angela Davis, are mixed in with all the rest of the feminists, womanists, and femmenists, and it is within the pages I feel like I can relate to the women anywhere, because they have offered their stories up for anyone to read.
Yet despite being able to relate to even the essay written by a supermodel when I’m reading alone, once I begin roaming the streets in my everyday tasks, I find myself slipping into a judgmental mindset, wherein I have to protect myself from not only what I perceive as the ever pervasive and condemning “male gaze” but the also almost more threatening “pretty girl gaze”. I become, in everyday, afraid of being judged, and as such end up judging myself.
I have an idea of what it may take to instead affirm all the women and girls I perceive as unnecessarily hyper-sexualized and made dumb by their own buy-in and sell-out to patriarchy, but it would be impossible to interview each and every female I felt intimidated by because of her outer appearance. Even then, this would lead to the issue that if she could not “explain herself”, I would walk away with an even greater disdain for her, thereby creating a deeper inability for me to readily accept “my sisters” and sometimes seeding a guilt of “feminist failure” within me. Despite knowing how hard it is for me to feel like a sister to all women, especially women such as Jesse Jane, the sorority girl with the short skirt and high boots, and the daisy duke sporting high school student, I usually do end up following up my harsh judgment of the other females with a judgment of myself, either as a “good” or “bad” feminist.
But is it possible to not pass judgment on them and affirm them instead, whether or not they can account for why they are who they are? There is no right or wrong answer that will solve all of the problems of the fears of the “pretty girl gaze”, which I believe exists as a reflection of the male gaze, and also which I have heard my female friends discuss (or otherwise describe as being “skanked out”, glared at, inspected, or having had a nose lifted at). Yet, what I have tried to do in order to neutralize my almost instant scorn towards these women is to remember the book I bought in high school, especially the essay by the supermodel, and to remember what Veronica Webb said in regards to heated accusations of her being a “piece of meat” with no power: “…[F]or you to get that upset at me already tells me that I have emotional power over you” (212). Furthermore, she goes on to say that while women agonize they can’t look like her; she accepts that she cannot look like them, and that no woman can actually be an airbrushed picture. Somehow, all of this internal re-reading of the book makes me back-off the other woman a little bit, and if I still have trouble not glaring at her slender legs or desirable hair, or if I’m angered by all the men and women who take a double look at her and time seems to slow down like a romantic movie for her to walk past with the wind ruffling her skirt and locks, then I proceed to imagine a conversation with her in which she isn’t the epitome of a “dumb girl” with great boobs and a fine ass.
I don’t believe it is likely for humans to stop judging each other at first glance any time soon. I believe that’s how we function and interact, by, at some point, judging through our own gaze. I think that the problem is that we create “clear” divisions, especially as women to other women. In high school, cliques were outrageously clear, and even though none of us clearly understood who we or each other were, we thought cliques could be crisply outlined. Even today, at this age, we create divisions, by sex, age, class, race, or profession, and it’s hard to see past it. Porn stars, we seem to assume, are all the same, selling themselves short for the ultimate patriarchal organization. Yet we don’t consider if these women are single mothers, or struggling to make a living, or trying to find a way to express themselves sexually, or if they also fit into a more sympathetic category. We don’t know if they are political activists, writers, singers, or mothers. Only one aspect of their lives is enough to condemn them by some people’s standards.
Yet despite how much humans like to put other humans into clear categories, that is not how we actually exist. We have much potential and many aspects, and exclusion and fellowship are arbitrary when lots of opinions are involved. For feminism, this means that many theories are hard to accept, or it may be difficult to create a collaboration and cohesion within such theories. Indeed, I believe that there can be as many theories of feminism as there are people. Yet connection, at least for me, by way of conversation or self exploration or expression, can override all these emphasized differences, for I believe in a different and less obvious type of beauty: beauty that exists on the inside, and by this can all women be affirmed by their own right. It just may take a few blinks to see past my initial glance.

Literature Cited
Webb, Veronica. “How Does A Supermodel Do Feminism?” to be real. Ed. Rebecca Walker.
New York: First Anchor Books Edition, 1995. 209-218.

Mmmmm...Thursday.

Nay to jealousy and dependency.
Yea to breaking the bondage of sentimentality.
Yea to books like

because they rock.
Yea to walking around in your underwear just because.
Nay to Economics 201, and people not wanting to buy a clutchless Ford Escort LX hatchback.

i love you all.

Ah, yet another week, and my spring break is beginning. I figure it's time for a new set of Yays and Nays.

Yay to the Women's Centers on campus and the people who work there.
Yay to rain coming down while the sun is out.
Nay to being told you're a whore just because you are "flirtatious".
Nay to all the negative explitives women are called just because they don't conform to certain standards of certain men.
Yay to women like Rachel Carson, who was soft spoken only until she was given a pen and paper, and then she became a lioness with a roar.
Nay to the discomfort and unnatural control of my cycle to birth control.
Yay to the choice of using birth control, and the choice to stop if i want, and the choice to stop having sex if i want, because it's my body and i should decide what happens inside and to it.
Yay to thrift stores and the awesome stuff you can find there.
Yay to throwing away a planner and buying a new one to feel totally refreshed and free from obligations and time constraints (Plus, because it still smelled like magaritas and was growing mold. haha. oops.).

It is my longest day of the week, and in between going to classes, i feel like writing on the whim of my righteous indignation and appraisal.

Hence, Yay and Nay.

Yay to fair trade coffee freshly ground at the Natural Food Co-op.
Nay to the yay-nay column of OSU's Daily Barometer. it said: Yay to Valentine's Day. In Japan, women are expected to give men chocolates and get nothing in return. It;s just like that in America, only with oral sex...Nay to Wal-Mart for stocking the morning after pill. Nothing says I love you like a 5am trip to Wal-Mart with your boyfriend. and invoked my rage.
Yay to the OSU pharmacy for carrying the morning after pill.
Yay to Frou Frou's "Let Go"
Yay to the OSU Women's Center and its volunteers and workers.
Nay to Angie Bergh's article rebuking the Vagina Monologues in the Daily Barometer (http://barometer.orst.edu/vnews/display.v/ART/2006/02/14/43f1a3cece3e6?in_archive=1)
Nay to the Daily Barometer for bumping Molly Grey's articles, and publishing that Nathan dude's racist article regarding Islam and Muslim people and religion.
Yay to Finnish rock bands, especially the Rasmus (and Lauri Ylonen!)
Yay to Sociology class.
Nay to Geosci class.
Nay to people saying that the most balanced relationships are heterosexual (people actually say that...)
Yay to getting a camwalker off, and Yay to Code Pink Special Edition High Top Sneakers (http://www.nosweatapparel.com/miva/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Product_Code=5015&Category_Code=NSS&Product_Count=5)

What are you yaying and naying this week?

Generally,
People don't like change.
Change is a struggle to realign and readjust.
And generally, people don't like to struggle.
Struggling is too often seemingly futile.
And generally, people don't like feeling futile.
Futility is a rut that requires change.
People just need to stop doing the same things over and expecting different results.
Generally, that just doesn't work.
And when green hits head on with purple
And blue provokes orange to the point of breaking
Someone needs to stand up and help shift the paradigm.
And eventually you'll find that you have to drag yourself out of the feather down blanket
And speak about it.
Though what may seem more difficult
You have to listen.
Because even though strife gives us all a parallel experience
We're all still minorities
(And separation will only bury the truth)
It shouldn't have to be one big melting pot
Where we all get together and emerge happy and whole
Forgetting that unity is more of a puzzle you struggle to fit together as individuals working - a culmination of souls striving on the only constant, which is change.
It's entirely too unfortunate that, generally, people don't like change.
Just remember: change is easier once you start to learn.
It's a good thing a few people like learning.

i didn't know the pizza was yours, ma'am...
but if it was any consolation
i enjoyed it.
And, forgive me for my hesitation,
But i'm not sorry.
i hold that no one should be sorry for being hungry
hungry
hungry because of sacrifice to tiny plump fingers clutching to skirts and breadcrusts on a dirty street
hungry because of dark closet corners all too familiar
hungry because i had tasted poetry.
Poetry that had melted from angst and selfish loveand shifted to the greater things
demons and nymphs (how cliche)
gathering under the boughs of every facade and color of humanity on stage-dreams pulsing out from under the floorboards pulsing so high so strong
you can taste it dripping from your tongue and sailing up through the ceiling and soar left alone in the great wide expanse of the empty dumpster searching for something more / night silence shattered by sirens and screams heads lift high senses snap / am i the only one who can't write a fucking poem? Because the wails are echoing off the chambers of my suddenly finite mind Dissected slowly by daggers flying friendly from my own kind
The kind that pastes the loving pisces on the back of their minivan and passes the tired girls thumbing their way home from the monotony of mortality, Becasue only creeps don't drive cars
Only creeps pick up girls with tattered homemade wings waving at the stars hidden behind a cyan curtain / Waving at the cyan curtain dropped to paint the night sky over a sad cracked sidewalk of a street where three little boys pause and lift their chins to connect to their darl existance.
No--no, not "dark"..because you forget, darkness isn't inferior, it isn't sinfully cunning filled with criminals and backbiters whispering about streetfighters fighting the fight of drugs and revenge -
i'll give you a fight to fight, mr president. i present hunger, i present homocide, i present rape, theft, and hate (god i hate those bike theives) it's poverty it's terrorism it's the terror of hunger, homicide, rape, and hate and lines drawn across the sky at dawn 100,000 miles from where the fight really is. or, where it should be. What do you mean we belong over there? What do you mean America is doing the right thing using fear- cold and stainless steel pressed against our heads silence screaming at our words and so much left unsaid because no one wanted to hear her, his, their story...

Now thats sick, as in, like, disgusting.

Don't do it.

Please don't delete me from your side as if i never existed in your eyes your dark brown hypnotizing eyes and your beautiful sleeping frame from cheekbone to thigh-
Don't erase me as if i'd never kissed your mouth your ear your neck, chest, and hipbones don't jar me with your metaphysical steel toes-
I'm still here i still exist i still love-
You don't remember, do you? I'm back to before i met you hereafter i begged you i left you to decide because you felt i lied and, i did, but i didn't mean to-like when you said that mean thing and rushed back in to hug me from behind and beg me to forgive
which i did
so many times, babe.
But, you deserve better
More beautiful and motivated and even though it hurts, i hope she doesn't cause you half as much pain as i gave you.
Let the rain wash the blame away you wonderful lover - thank you for the world while we had it.
All the suffering and especially all of the Nirvana.
Hopefully someday you'll forgive me and we can still be friends.
(I love you)
*it doesn't hold the magnitude*

and i must reflect on when we made love, tackled and kissed hard clothing slipped off skin against skin and tongues tracking unmentionables pressed together and a shudder of eroticism as my body craved you and your fingers were everywhere and i wanted you forever...
i wanted your lips everywhere your body part of mine your taste kept always and your face within reach. i traced your jawline contours memorizing it to devour later, alone. waking up next to you was the best because i knew i had someone that loved every part of me every inch of imperfection and saw love when i came home to your arms and felt "ok"...
i don't know why i broke your trust i don't understand how i broke our hearts, but it happened and you cut me off, alone on your porch in the rain - waiting for the reconciliation that never came.
i still ache for you but i make it disappear because you have every right to move on.

Go get'em, rock star.

i guess what it boils down to now is who breaks first
(you - because of me, and you)
(me - because of you, me and her)
and i wish it could be you
but it looks like i'm going to have to.
for the sake of sanity, comradery, and more pain.
Love isn't part of it and i wish i knew what was
we skirt the issue until i'm on the floor
your knees up between my legs my skirt high and uneffective
the only thing i'd say is that there can't just be one way
i wish i knew if my theory of diversity was true
but even truth is an illusion and it's
not emo it's
not angst it's
thoughts strung together in a chain that just broke
the glass window of growing up not questioning if even that was something someone made up
so you fill your arms with more scars
and add more lines to the should-be-art work
head heavy under drugged circumstances
crawl home so sober you're classified intoxicated and even the wind screams through your hair and fingers in silence
until you're so bereaft of touch it makes you sick -

standing in a canned food aisle i looked
at the stewed tomatoes and felt a pin prick above my sternum
and my whole world drained out
suddenly empty and disconnected and unwired
misfired with that round of applause and
clay bullets shooting at
shotgun pigeons losing to handgun ducks.
it doesn't relate it doesnt connect
it doesn't make sense
it just happens - saying goodbye to him
because of telling me there's got to be someone more (isn't it always like that?) for me
but i just want the security
without the need to impress and feel jealous. i wish it would happen
without the wine and ativan and dreams
done overwell cooked until the truth was gone.
i'm at the point when the least amount of tension heightened slightly for only a second scares the shit outta me.

Which Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy Character Are You?

Your Result

Advertisement