Les Femmes
I am a butch girl, in love with a femme girl and trapped in Ottawa on a business trip.
Before I traveled, she, horrified that I had never seen the monument to the Famous Five, extracted my promise to go.
So, although I am hot, hungry and in need of my weight in beer, I take my tattoos, my combat boots, my short-haired head and set out in this August sun to find Barbara Paterson's sculpture on The Hill.
Like a feminist magnetic north, it draws me easily. It is a glorious, metallic tea party, claimed square footage, craftily carved; an unmoving, life-filled stability.
As soon as I claim the empty chair so kindly offered by Emily Murphy and sit within, three boys arrive, as if on cue: all 20's, uniformed in khakis and white tee shirts, bursting with guffaws.
They do not notice me.
They punch Irene Parlby's arm, make fun of her wide brimmed hat, hump her silent form.
Louise McKinney and Henrietta Muir Edwards steal a glance. When I laugh out loud, the boys glare with puzzlement. I point toward the proclamation held high by Nellie McClung which, miraculously, they read aloud:
Les femmes sont des personnes.
They seem to understand that they are outnumbered, pause before they skulk away; leave me to my own devices.

I scratch my head at these seemingly bottomless gifts from her, this strong femme who - with a gentle grasp upon my heart – takes her rightful place in a proud line of those who forge the bronze, and, by heeding Aunt Nellie's sage advice to never retreat, explain, or apologize, grind adversity into a fine powder to soften the road ahead.
Gwen Bartleman
Gwen Bartleman is a proud butch dyke who was born in Ottawa and has called Toronto home since 1981. Her poems &amp; prose have been published in Our Times, anacoenisis; The Last Sex; Church Wellesley Review/Xtra Magazine and Rites Magazine. Currently, she is working on Floating in an Eddy of Femme, her first collection of poetry.

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Atlantis 31.2, 2007 PR www.msvu.ca/atlantis