poem for the week

Coping

by Audre Lorde

It has rained for five days
running
the world is
a round puddle
of sunless water
where small islands
are only beginning
to cope
a young boy
in my garden
is bailing out water
from his flower patch
when I ask him why
he tells me
young seeds that have not seen sun
forget
and drown easily.

poem for the week

The Weakness
by Toi Derricotte


That time my grandmother dragged me
through the perfume aisles at Saks, she held me up
by my arm, hissing, "Stand up,"
through clenched teeth, her eyes
bright as a dog's
cornered in the light.
She said it over and over,
as if she were Jesus,
and I were dead. She had been
solid as a tree,
a fur around her neck, a
light-skinned matron whose car was parked, who walked
on swirling
marble and passed through
brass openings--in 1945.
There was not even a black
elevator operator at Saks.
The saleswoman had brought velvet
leggings to lace me in, and cooed,
as if in service of all grandmothers.
My grandmother had smiled, but not
hungrily, not like my mother
who hated them, but wanted to please,
and they had smiled back, as if
they were wearing wooden collars.
When my legs gave out, my grandmother
dragged me up and held me like God
holds saints by the
roots of the hair. I begged her
to believe I couldn't help it. Stumbling,
her face white
with sweat, she pushed me through the crowd, rushing
away from those eyes
that saw through
her clothes, under
her skin, all the way down
to the transparent
genes confessing.




From Captivity by Toi Derricotte, published by the University of Pittsburgh Press. Copyright © 1989 Toi Derricotte.

poem for the week

it seems that i am always attempting to "clean" up my life...cluttered and disorganized...i sometimes imagine what it would be like if i were "together." in any event, this is an ongoing process with me and one that i will probably never master...or want to for that matter. however, in this latest spurt to organize i have been attempting to file away papers, etc. in the really nice filing cabinet that i have. until now, it has stood next to my desk, empty. this leads me to the poem of the week. i found my poetry books and i was reading through them. i used to write poetry and short fiction all of the time but since i have been in graduate school i just haven't felt the interest...not that i think my poetry/writing is any good...quite the opposite but for nostalgic reasons i think that i will put up a poem that i wrote way back in 1993...wow, at the tender age of 25. here it goes...

applying for heterosexual status

"when the applicant comes in

make sure that he is properly dressed
absolutely no purple or pink...anywhere.

make sure he understands that
picking flowers is no longer an option
anymore and neither is holding or hugging
anyone except for the occasional girlfriend
or wife (and even then use discretion).

make sure he deepens his voice...
facial hair would be nice and advise
him to rape a woman (mentally or
physically) if he is certain that he can get
away with it.

make sure that he holds a job that
requires him to wear a suite,
construction clothes, or at least
a tie.

make sure that he does not lisp.

make sure he understands that truly
caring for anything should be avoided at all costs
and if, by chance, he does, order him
to kill it. Speaking of death, encourage
him to join the military or the NRA...it's manly
enough and very patriotic.

make sure he eats a lot of meat.
hunting and killing defenseless
life-forms should also be considered
an appropriate hobby to pursue...and/or golf.
populate, populate, populate, populate
this world and by all means express
to him the importance of setting an
example for future generations."

oaw (12/29/93)

i should've added something about church or religion...i think the populate, populate sentence does this but i can't remember what i had in mind. i don't know what prompted me to write this...i think i was fed up with "straight acting" white gay men.
also, if i were to revise this i would add something to the effect:
"make sure he incorporates the conjunction 'but'
it's a useful word because he will be able to qualify any
misogynist, racist, and/or homophobic utterance that he wants
to relay...for example:'let me say that i am a pro-feminist male but...blah blah blah." or
'i'm all for letting people live and let live but...blah, blah, blah."
'i've written and edited books on sexism and homophobia but...blah, blah, blah."

poem for the week: abjectness or something like it

A Reason for Moving
by Mark Strand

In a field
I am the absence
of field.
This is
always the case.
Wherever I am
I am what is missing.

When I walk
I part the air
and always
the air moves in
to fill the spaces
where my body's been.

We all have reasons
for moving
I move to keep things whole.

re: the gay games

ok, i know that the gay games are over in chicago but i'm thinking next year....i am really, really, really good at "beetle bomp" on yahoo games and i'm wondering if i should start a letter writing campaign to see if i could get this "sport" listed on the agenda because, quite honestly, i could get the gold.

meme

dev tagged me to do this meme, so here it is:


1. One book that changed your life:
Toni Morrison's Beloved

2. One book that you've read more than once:
Toni Morrison's Beloved

3. One book you'd want on a desert island:
Harry Potter books! and Beloved

4. One book that made you laugh:
compilations of Gary Larson's The Far Side cartoons

5. One book that made you cry:
Geek Love by Katherine Dunn

6. One book that you wish had been written:
one more book by Audre Lorde

7. One book that you wish had never been written:
Adolf Hitler's Mien Kampf

8. One book you're currently reading:
Moby Dick

9. One book you've been meaning to read:
Julia Kristeva's Black Sun

10. People you are tagging to do this meme.
Anyone else who wants to do this.

a compliment to dev's poem of the week :-)

You Begin
by Margaret Atwood

You begin this way:
this is your hand,
this is your eye,
that is a fish, blue and flat
on the paper, almost
the shape of an eye.
This is your mouth, this is an O
or a moon, whichever
you like. This is yellow.

Outside the window
is the rain, green
because it is summer, and beyond that
the trees and then the world,
which is round and has only
the colors of these nine crayons.

This is the world, which is fuller
and more difficult to learn than I have said.
You are right to smudge it that way
with the red and then
the orange: the world burns.

Once you have learned these words
you will learn that there are more
words than you can ever learn.
The word hand floats above your hand
like a small cloud over a lake.
The word hand anchors
your hand to this table,
your hand is a warm stone
I hold between two words.

This is your hand, these are my hands, this is the world,
which is round but not flat and has more colors
than we can see.

It begins, it has an end,
this is what you will
come back to, this is your hand.