Waves

A poem reflect­ing on the fem­in­ist work at WIRE

I’m writ­ing a letter to fem­in­ism: a love letter,
A letter of long­ing, a letter of hope,
A letter of rage, a letter of solidarity.

There are echoes of us all through time,
My fin­gers on these keys are at the same time
Char­lotte Per­kins Gilman in her yellow wall­papered room
And audre lorde and bell hooks and maya angelou
Writ­ing i know why the caged bird sings
And sojourner truth asking ain’t I a woman?
That woman con­nec­tion of sis­ter­hood or motherhood,
Birth­ing know-how and herblore
the witches on the edge of the forest,
those that walk the paths of madness.
The two-spirit folk and the Khwaja Sara;
Wise women.

We are all con­nec­ted, and each of us has a tale,
Thorns among roses, pain sharp or dulled.
I remem­ber as a teen­ager read­ing about Frances Farmer
And know­ing that I risked her fate, too bold, too loud,
Too proud, not soft enough, insuf­fi­ciently malleable,
Loved other bold, loud, proud girls in their soft bodies,
Stolen kisses under Haley’s Comet’s light.

(And also secretly I am Walt Whit­man with his wild yawp
And his lithe male­ness and his fierce cel­eb­ra­tion of man-love;
That too is me, O my cap­tain. There are no longer adequate pronouns
For I con­tain mul­ti­tudes)

The per­sonal is the polit­ical but I don’t want to dwell
On emo­tional abuse and how I was forged in neglect;
I am more a child of Simone de Beau­voir and Vir­ginia Woolf
Than I was ever a child of my father’s; talk to me about
My resi­li­ence — I am a phoenix rising over and over;
I rebuild myself anew each day as do we all.

Nobody ever said this was simple. That us’ versus them’ rhetoric
Is such a trap — there are layers on layers and we are all
Mul­ti­far­i­ous, vivid and ourselves exist­ing within structures
We did not choose. It’s not you; it’s not me; it’s not them’;
In the end, it’s all of us, together along axes of connection.
The sim­il­ar­it­ies must be where we can speak to each other.

We’ve spent half the night kvetch­ing about the hardships
Of being female and nav­ig­at­ing the wilds of this crazy world,
That unless you win the jack­pot in the spin­ning wheel of life
And some­how dodge any form of mental or phys­ical illness,
Some­how manage to meet someone who loves you and
Never raises a fist or gas­lights you; some­how avoid the acid-
Throw­ers who punish girls like you who are too damn free;
Some­how avoid the bul­lets shot by those who would destroy
The Malalas of the world —

This is a self-con­scious letter of inter­sti­tial intersectionality,
An epis­tolary missive that will never be sent —
A rad­ical act of self-care
A gift

(Image: Audre Lorde lec­tures at the Atlantic Center for the Arts in New Smyrna Beach, Flor­ida, 1983. Pho­to­graph: Robert Alexander)