tended by poet Frances Donovan
Three haiku at the Phoenix Hotel on the edge of the Tenderloin
san francisco streets
wrought iron gate, open sky
urban oasis
blue mosaic pool
low chairs arranged artfully
artwork, fountains, fire
outside, the homeless
squeal of buses, 6am
unmerited gifts
Last week, I was about to board a plan to San Francisco when I saw Adrienne Rich’s obituary on the front page of the New York Times.
It’s hard to describe Adrienne Rich’s impact on my life with grace and brevity. That’s because my relationship to her work mirrors my relationship to the literary establishment as a whole. I first heard of her when I was a junior in high school, young poet full of promise and bereft of friends after the class of 1989 graduated and scattered off to college. A precocious freshman named Deborah, with reddish hair and presumptuous mannerisms, was shocked to learn I hadn’t already read and loved her work. What Deborah didn’t know (and neither did I) was that I’d been raised on the literary canon, comprised then as it is now almost exclusively of men. Five years later I wrote my senior thesis at Vassar on her work and the arc of her life. Seventeen years later, Margalit Fox‘s obituary said it better than I ever could.
Continue reading “Rest in Peace Adrienne Rich: Fellow Poet, Feminist, Queer Woman, Trail-Blazer”
what does it mean to be empty
and what does it mean to be full?
empty air
over the still glass
surface of the pond
empty belly
geese make
full-throated calls,
expectant
on a monday after the clocks change–
magic hour of daylight
missing hour of sleep
banks empty
still winter-brown
the fluttering sound
of a goose
drinking from the pond
she glides across
empty water, swirling,
then still
after her passing
the park full
of people stunned
at the way winter falls away
the playground full
of children shouting
in foreign tongues
pen drops from my hand
over the empty boulder
into the clear water
rests on the empty bottom
my womb, empty again
this moment
full of silence
this mind
full of the moment
blessed
empty
I got my 1.5 seconds of Youtube fame in this video put together by the Harvard Medical School community for the It Gets Better project.
Link in case the embed fails: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOOo7ZtjKBI
Living well is often the best revenge. Every GLBT person who lives through the hell of childhood and adolescence in a homophobic society is a hero in my eyes.
If you have the time, the resources, and the intestinal fortitude, I also encourage you to take more direct action to improve the lives of young people currently living through that hell. Things have gotten better than they were when I was a child and a young woman. And in many places there is still plenty of room for improvement. The Make it Better Project is one way you can make a difference in the lives of GLBT, questioning, and allied youth today.
Copley Plaza, lunch:
wind flaps the ropes of flagpoles
sun opens our coats
hug the trees awake
feel the sap rising within
outside, no jacket
march like a song, sad sigh
sun beats from the cloudless sky
dry sinus, cold hands
When you and your wife/girlfriend/mistress/love slave started yelling at me for putting my plastic bag full of plastic bags into the mostly-empty paper bag that you had deposited at the steps of the mostly-full dumpster near our dwellings, I thought perhaps that you had recycling in it.
So I asked if I had mistakenly mixed my garbage with your recycling. But no, it appears that you were in fact offended by the promiscuous mingling of our household detritus.
I still think this is crazy, which is why I said things like “What’s the big deal? Trash is trash!”
I don’t really know what you started shouting back at me, because I was in fact carrying on a conversation with my mother via cell phone at the same time. Upon reflection, this is probably what really upset you: not my cavalier attitude toward the mingling of household garbage, but the fact that I never stopped to give you my undivided attention. Or maybe you were mad because you thought I expected you to throw my trash into the dumpster with your trash. Or maybe you have some kind of garbage fetish that requires you and your love slave to personally handle all trash before it goes in the dumpster. Like I said, I really wasn’t paying attention.
I’m not sure if you heard me say (and later — as your own voice rose in volume — shout) things like “I’m so sorry for having offended you, sir,” because you were going on about something or another. Like I said, I really wasn’t listening. I could tell you were angry, though, and apparently because of something I had done. In my humble opinion, you and your love slave are both wound a little too tight about how your trash is disposed of.
Do you not understand the concept of trash? Do you not know where trash goes? Have you never been to a dump or a landfill? Did you think the sanitation workers took each little bag of trash and gave it a decent burial, with maybe a headstone and a prayer? Do you think there is a trash embalming center somewhere? Or were you really just offended because I never bothered to put down my cell phone and treat you like a human being instead of an animated speed bump?
I know how annoying multitasking cell-phone users can be. So, for demeaning your inherent worth and dignity by shouting nice things I clearly didn’t mean and walking off before you could explain yourself, I do apologize. Perhaps we’ll meet again at the dumpster and I will have the opportunity to amend my behavior.
In the meantime I suggest you take a deep, cleansing breath, and try not to get too worked up about what happens to your garbage once you put it down in front of the dumpster. It’s only garbage, after all — one thing that we Americans have in abundance.
Sincerely,
Me
clouds obscure the sun
al fresco lunch in winter
dirty snow, green grass
Dear Get In Shape for Women:
Thank you so much for your congratulations on my new house! Nothing says “welcome to the neighborhood” like a postcard from a company that found me via an automated report from the United States Postal Service. I’m also touched and gratified that you care enough about my health to offer me an affordable, convenient option for losing weight so close to home.
Here’s the thing:
I don’t want to lose any weight.
I have no interest in losing any weight.
And if I decided I *did* want to lose some weight or join a gym, your marketing approach has completely ruined any chance of your getting my business. I’ll spare you the diatribe about the way constant media messages and images screw with women’s perceptions of what constitutes a normal, healthy body. I’ll refrain from quoting the statistics that show how much money the weight loss industry collects from women in their vain attempts to lose weight and keep it off.
Garden of Words 