Sinister Wisdom 		Ignite!

86

Publisher: Sinister Wisdom, Inc.           Sinister Wisdom 86
Summer 2012

Editors: Merry Gangemi & Julie R. Enszer
Layout and Design: Julie R. Enszer
Board of Directors: Shaba Barnes, Susan Levinkind, Joan Nestle, Judith K.
Witherow
Office Manager: Susan Levinkind
Web Design: Sue Lenaerts
Special thanks to: All of the womyn who contributed work in its many forms, ourreaders, and our supporters in the journey.
Front Cover Art: Kyle Anne Bates
SINISTER WISDOM, founded 1976
Former editors and publishers:
Harriet Ellenberger (aka Desmoines)
and Catherine Nicholson (1976-1981)
Michelle Cliff and Adrienne Rich (1981-1983)
Michaele Uccella (1983-1984)
Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz (1983-1987)
Elana Dykewomon (1987-1994)
Caryatis Cardea (1991-1994)
Akiba Onada-Sikwoia (1995-1997)
Margo Mercedes Rivera-Weiss (1997-2000)
Fran Day (2004-2010)
Sinister Wisdom is a multicultural, multi-class, lesbian space. We seek to open,
consider and advance the exploration of community issues. We recognize thepower of language to reflect our diverse experiences and to enhance our ability todevelop critical judgment, as lesbians evaluating our community and our world.
Statements made and opinions expressed in this publication do not necessarilyreflect the views of the publisher, board members, or editor(s) of Sinister Wisdom.
Copyright © 2012 Sinister Wisdom, Inc.
All rights revert to individual authors and artists.
ISSN: 0196-1853. Printed in the U. S. on recycled paper.
Subscribe online: www.SinisterWisdom.org
Join Sinister Wisdom on Facebook: www.Facebook.com/SinisterWisdom
Sinister Wisdom is a U.S. non-profit organizations; donations to support the work anddistribution of Sinister Wisdom are welcome and appreciated.
Consider including Sinister Wisdom in your will.
Sinister Wisdom, Inc. PO Box 3252, Berkeley, CA 94703,USA

Summer 2012 • 1

Notes for a Magazine

4

Lesbians in the World of Spoken Word Poetry
Joanna Hoffman

6

Beibs and Usher

10

What It Means To Believe/With a Full Mouth

11

What To Do When You Are Raped
Camonghne Felix

12

At The Hands of My Brothers

15

Too Close
Charan P. Morris

17

To The Wife of a Homosexual Man

20

How to “come out” and stay out
Natasha Miller

23

Pride
Joanna Hoffman

25

The Choice
C.A. Popovich

29

Etiology of Cool

32

Persephone Departs The Upcountry

33

Turning Pentecostal
Stephania Byrd34

All of It

37

From the Shore

38

Learning
Amanda Laughtland

39

ScatteredSarah Brooks40

2 • Sinister Wisdom 86 – Ignite!

Let me tell you about my twig lines

44

She who floods like a river
Shae Savoy

46

Circus Act

49

Questions for an Intellectually Confident Woman
Devi K. Lockwood

50

Morning Blues (and/or Greens)
Vanessa Vitiello51

Storm Between Lovers

55

Her CallKaren Norris

56

A Night of Lust
Nancy Santos

57

Learning the Way

58

My Tribe60

Nora
Kyle Anne Bates

61

Significator
Julie E. Justicz

62

Beauty School

68

Recycling69

Intersection
Lisa Dordal

70

If I Had to be a Flower
Betsy Brown

71

Ensorcellment
Aisha Sidibe

72

Questing Spirit

76

Winter Labyrinth
Martha Yoak

77

Summer 2012 • 3Longing
Kate Yarrow

78

Siren

86

October 13th
Susan DiPronio

87

Collards for Sale
Susan DiPronio and Alison Gerig

88

Hair
Sarah Brooks

89

Book Reviews

93

Letter to the Editors

104

Contributors

106

Where To Find Sinister Wisdom

113

Calls for Submissions

114

Advertisements115

4 • Sinister Wisdom 86 – Ignite!

Notes for a Magazine
Merry and I were in New York City for the 24 th Annual
Lambda Literary Awards in early June 2012. We spent part ofthe day shopping for black shoes to go with Merry’s outfit for thegala event. The shopping excursion was a great opportunity for
Merry and I to catch up on our Sinister Wisdom work, including
our dreams and schemes for the future.
The Lambda Literary Awards were wonderful. The“Lammies” are a wonderful showcase of Lesbian, gay, bisexual,and transgender authors and literary luminaries. This year Kate
Millet was honored with the pioneer award for her many
contributions to lesbian-feminist publishing. Lesbian writers areproducing creative, powerful, moving and entertaining work. Do
check out the Lambda Literary Award finalists in all of thelesbian categories. While the evening was wonderful, we noticed
the dearth of mainstream, New York publishers producing
Lesbian work. Major New York publishing houses released titles
by gay male authors, but Lesbian authors rarely appear inmainstream presses. This is a great concern; mainstream
publishers provide vital visibility and circulation of Lesbian ideas
and Lesbian literature. Without that exposure, it is difficult for
Lesbian writers and intellectuals to find large audiences. Thisobservation is not meant to minimize the fabulous publishinghouses devoted to lesbian authors including Bella, Bywater, andSpinsters Ink; these presses, and other like them, are vital to
Lesbian culture and we must support them by buying their books
and sharing them with friends and colleagues. Mainstream
publishing houses have a role in Lesbian literary culture, as well;
we must demand that they include lesbian voices in the work thatthey publish.
This issue of Sinister Wisdom carries the theme Ignite!
Merry and I felt ignited by the Lambda Literary Awards and feel
ignited every day by our work on Sinister Wisdom. We want toignite lesbians everywhere.
Sinister Wisdom 86: Ignite! opens with an important article
about lesbians in the world of spoken word poetry written by
Joanna Hoffman. Hoffman also curated selection of spoken word
poems by Lesbians just for Sinister Wisdom. It was a pleasure toSummer 2012 • 5work with Joanna on this section and we hope you will enjoy
reading it and discovering these poets.
Sinister Wisdom 86: Ignite! is also chocked full with poetry,fiction, and creative non-fiction by Lesbians. We hope you willfind within these pages something that surprises, delights,
provokes, and ignites you.
At the end of the journal, you will find a particularlyrobust selection of book reviews. Grace Sikorski reviews Noctilucent
by Sinister Wisdom contributor Melissa Buckheit; Ruth
Mountaingrove reviews two books, including the gem from 1989,
A Lesbian Love Advisor by Celeste West; Jean Taylor also offers tworeviews including a review of Jeanne Cordova’s Lambda-award
winning, When We Were Outlaws. There are many good books
from lesbian writers deserving your attention. If you know of agreat new lesbian book, drop us a line and think about writing areview for Sinister Wisdom.
In addition to publishing three high-quality issues ofSinister Wisdom each year, we are working to strengthen theorganizational infrastructure of Sinister Wisdom. In the next few
months, we will be adding new board members. In the fall, we
will have an online fundraising campaign. Watch for information
about it on our webpage, www.SinisterWisdom.org, and on
Facebook, www.Facebook.com/SinisterWisdom. If you are on
Facebook and have not “liked” the Sinister Wisdom page, pleasetake a moment to do so today.
Sinister Wisdom is pleased to welcome Bookwoman ofAustin, TX as a distributor of Sinister Wisdom. If you are in theAustin area, please rush to Bookwoman and make a purchasethere to thank them for supporting Sinister Wisdom. Bookwoman
have one of the best poetry sections I have seen in a feminist
bookstore.
Help us grow Sinister Wisdom! Find Sinister Wisdom at yourlocal bookstore, join us online at www.sinisterwisdom.org and on
Facebook. Become a part of the community devoted to nurturing,preserving, and celebrating Lesbian art and culture.
Julie R. Enszer
Summer 2012

6 • Sinister Wisdom 86 – Ignite!

Lesbians in the World of Spoken Word Poetry
Joanna Hoffman
Poetry is not a luxury—Audre Lorde
I remember the first time I allowed myself to use a female
pronoun in a love poem—how that word, she, had the ability toshake my whole world and force me to confront the truth that
terrified me. Years later, when I began performing spoken word
poetry, I would feel that same gut-wrench twist every time I
revealed to the audience that I was a lesbian. I’m not sure what I
expected, exactly—a Republican to drop a piano on me, arainbow to fall from the sky, my mother to appear in the doorway
yelling, But I thought you LIKED Jason!
Now, ten years from when I started performing, I no
longer feel scared revealing my sexuality to a crowd. However,that doesn’t mean there aren’t negative responses, only that I’ve
stopped worrying about them. I’ve had a crowd of over 100 gasp
and snicker at my declarations of love for a woman, and I’ve also
had teenagers email me after a feature to tell me they’re in thecloset and hope one day to have the courage to come out. I’ve
also been an audience member watching poets make offensive nohomo references, or talk about gay sex as a disgusting practice.
This is especially problematic when the other audience members
are young and impressionable, and look up to the poets onstage.
Spoken word poetry provides a critical platform foradvocacy and education, and has since its inception hundreds ofyears ago. Before the written word existed, oral storytellers passedalong the history of their people. In the 1980s, a Chicago
construction worker named Marc Smith developed competitive,
spoken word poetry as we know it today. Smith was eager to finda more interactive and exciting forum for poetry, one that would
require audiences to not only listen but also participate. In poetry
slams, random audience members are selected to judge thepoems using numerical score cards, and the remaining audience
members are encouraged to loudly react to the scores given.

Summer 2012 • 7

In the past ten years, slam poetry has exploded in size and scope.
Poets from across the world convene each year at the Individual
World Poetry Slam (IWPS), the Women of the World Poetry
Slam (WOWPS) and the National Poetry Slam (NPS).
Approximately 75 individuals compete at IWPS and WOWPS
each year, and about 75 teams of 4-5 members each compete at
NPS each year. More information on slam poetry is available atwww.poetryslam.com.
When I was “growing up” in the spoken word scene, I
learned of a few out, successful lesbian poets: Alix Olson, Andrea
Gibson and Stacyann Chin. Each have have made a living fromtheir spoken word following, and tour across the globe. The vast
majority of spoken word poets are heterosexual, however, and the
topic of lesbianism is still viewed as taboo at poetry readings insome parts of the country. There is a need for greater visibility of
LGBTQ poets in the spoken word scene. Our stories need to beheard— both because we need to tell them, but also because wehave the potential to open minds and work to combat
stereotypes.
LGBTQ spoken word poets of color, in particular, havelong been denied the visibility and recognition they rightly
deserve. Here I introduce you to three of my favorite spoken
word poets: Camonghne Felix, Charan Morris and Natasha
Miller.
Camonghne Felix entered the spoken word scene as ayouth poet, and has since taken the adult scene by storm. Her
poetry is provocative, unflinching and necessary. She feels thatbeing an LGBTQ artist comes with an inherent responsibility:
Whenever I step on stage, or whenever my voice occupies a room, I know that
I am representing every label that I choose to subscribe to. I can't ever stop
being black, or pansexual, or a woman - not for the three minutes that it takes
to dispel a message to an audience. I know the bravery it takes to wake up
every morning and decide to be proud of yourself. I like to think that myself
and the members of all oppressed groups who choose to speak out are giving thepeople of our communities reasons to wake up and be proud of themselves.
Camonghne raises an interesting point here—thepressure placed upon anyone given a platform from which to
speak. A person in front of a microphone in a room packed full of8 • Sinister Wisdom 86 – Ignite!

listening ears has the ability to convey whatever message they’dlike, and there is a responsibility woven into that experience.
Storytelling has long served as a mechanism for sparking humanconnections, including the realization that one person’s
experience is not so far off from another’s experience. Or, if is theexperiences are quite different, that is a learning experience initself. Ideally, different experiences inspire audiences to become
more informed, compassionate and active in advocating for theright of all people.
Charan Morris describes this experience. She says thatcoming out to her audiences and peers …forced many of them to acrossroads at which they had to choose whether or not to wrestle with howmuch their misconceptions were completely alien to who they know me to be.
There were some who chose not to face their ignorance, but the sheer number ofpeople who were ready to rise to the occasion surprised me.
… Each person that walks into a spoken word venue and learns
about the volatile ignorance LGBTQ folks face through poems like “At The
Hands of Our Brothers” is a potential mind changed, is a potential hate crime
avoided, is a potential closeted queer person who has found their will to comeout in the worlds they are members of. Hearing other work from poets like
Simply Rob, StaceyAnn Chin and other LGBT poets, gave me the will that I
once needed to publicly combat societal ignorance aimed at LGBT folks, with
my own work. Now, I aim to be the person these poets were for me, forsomeone in the audience.
Every time I perform poems about the issues [that] LGBT [people]
are forced to carry, I charge other poets and audience members with being
accountable for their own ignorance and awareness simultaneously. I charge
those who respect me and/or my work with being accountable for the way they
speak and write about queer folks of color. Each poem is my way of fighting
for the space that others need to dare to be themselves.
Charan proves that Audre Lorde was right—poetry is nota luxury. For many of us, and for many years, it has been a small
voice in the back of our heads demanding to be heard. As we’ve
entered the time of Facebook and twitter, the internet has
emerged as a vast and often terrifying space to express ourselves
and reach out to others for support.
Natasha addresses the experience of coming out in thedigital world in a brilliantly-conceptualized new book, Coming Out
of Nowhere (2012). Natasha describes the book as …a Social
Networking Memoir that allows readers to mentally and emotionally “log-in”

Summer 2012 • 9

to their favorite websites (Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube) and view theopinions of others on love, hate, suicide, tragedy, politics, religion, cyberbullying, entertainment, mental illness, freedom of choice, homophobia, and allother things surrounding homosexuality by simply turning a page.
These women have incredible stories to tell, and so I’mhonored to present their poetry to you here.

10 • Sinister Wisdom 86 – Ignite!

Beibs and Usher
Camonghne Felix

Camonghne Felix (Photo Credit: Taylor Flash)

I googled Justin Beiber’s relationship with Usher/ because I
wanted to know if they were still men who hugged each otherwith full arms on carpets that have bled the men who wanted tolove like them before them. In my head I am passing a baton tothem, saying ‘here is your choice’ or ‘here is your mission’ / to bea man who finds another boy in the gridlocks of a challenge andpromises to foster some kind of father thing/ the kind of thingthat gives the boy a damn good reason to wanna be that boy
everyday/ My wanting to know is of unfounded reason, it isselfish and pestering and it dominates a room sometimes /andthese two men are like windstorms in a segment that wont slow
down for anything with too much love clamoring beside it/ twomen loving each other like that, so big mouth in a gaping
hallway/ pop is like that/ a phone call with erratic listeners/ but
Beibs said ‘I love you’ to Usher at the Grammys last year andUsher held his shoulders/ and the cheeky ones felt it too/ and it
made everybody smile. Got two boys making everybody in one
room smile. You got a bright light and a gauntlet pillowing it.

Summer 2012 • 11

What It Means To Believe/With a Full Mouth
Camonghne Felix
People have told me/that my brain is a bronzed/
drinking gourd/with so much whistle/
so much promise/
Today I caught my own/
filament/
in a subway window andthought/ ‘this is theface of someone whowill win’/ and kept
staring.
I travel home/ after thisthe night/ coasting on
my back/ my mother says
“you really believe/ that
this is how you will change
the world?”/ the snarlin her voice/ shoving myboisterous/ness to the walls/
I shrugged the half/ atlas of/
my body towards the/ door
steady silencing/ the corrosion
and I just/ stood there and/made myself really/ feelit/ made my entire/ frame
conduct the/ costly exit ofa missile/(If you were to rearrange
these stanzas in any
conceivable combination
the story would never change.)12 • Sinister Wisdom 86 – Ignite!

What To Do When You Are Raped
Camonghne Felix
If you were ever waiting for the day that you are dressed for truth
it will be the day of your rape kit
when they will lock the balls of your feet into clamps that holdlike labor
ask you questions about your cycles
want to know if you urinate before or after you inhale
how many ways you've ever been invisible ink
before they decide that they can believe you.
then they'll lock the results onto a chart.
stare at you like you are a brand new resurrection of smiles
the ob/gyn will whisper “I am glad that I am not your mother”
and you will watch her crumble in front of you
like she always doesat least twice daily.
you will think that she is lucky to have woken up in her own skinthis morning.
The first morning
the first baththe first breakfast
is always the recounting of your portions
you will make note of where the patterns have burned
where he tagged himself to your blue of your trauma
It will feel like banishment.
Everyone will talk at you
instead of with you
with words like victim and survivor whimpering out of pharmacy
bottlesof brandy and vodka
Instantly, you will knowthat they have no right to label you survivor until you feel like one
Eventually, you will tell themthat being raped
is like global annihilation inside of one bodySummer 2012 • 13

like losing god in the middle of a blizzard
like knowing where your pulse is but walking right by it
backroads are not backroads anymore
they are movie scenes for girls with footsteps like swollen dialogue
they wanna talk to you
they want you to know that they are sorry
without knowing what they are sorry forand you will almost be grateful for them
if you could walk.
But in the bathroom
your blood is still lining the tub
At the police station
your favorite bra is infused with the smell of man
and winterand it's still in your hair
you cant wash it out
and in the kitchen
your mother is cooking so much
like she wants to compress the morning into your stomach
in your bedroom
you are still circling the parts of you where his teeth
His smell of man
his hands like a gardener's haven't been
And you will think,what kind of woman am I now
with my insides like a shipwreck
what kind of woman am I now
my laundry yawningand dirty like he carved something burlesqueinto the failure of my fists
What kind of lover will I be
my body
like a thesaurus of sins.
What kind of motherwill I be
when my daughter asks
if I loved the man who ripped the balance from me?

14 • Sinister Wisdom 86 – Ignite!

But then two weeks later
maybe two months
maybe a year
The mirror will remind you of everything you've still got left tofight with.
broken will just be a metaphor for restoration
you will teach yourself to breathe
like immaculate conception were just a hum under your chest
You will walkfor the first timein days
You will think of your legs as nothing short of hieroglyphs
There will be nothing brittle boned
about the way you will sign your name after thisAnd thenyour entire web of scars
will be trophy.
You will be sturdy like a tractor trailers last run.
And then you will be survivor.
And queen
and god.
All at the same time.

Summer 2012 • 15

At The Hands of My Brothers
Charan P. Morris
For Tayshana Murphy
A dimming rainbow puddlingonto pavement at the knees and tears of your mother.
Photos of the black boys who murdered you
reeling flashbacks from my memory:
At 14, I watch my older sister and her girlfriend
cornered close to moving doors on a Chicago train.
Their faces almost breaking against their perpetrator’s fist
I hope that if they grip each other tight enoughtheir love will cloak them from their attackers.
But their arms hold no magic against two black men
with liquor-loose fists,
their drunken mouths ejaculatinga fire and brimstone of batty girl slurs.
Frozen in parallel seat, my silent anger
as choking as a tongue swallowed.
It was then that I learned how quickly men
with the same Diaspora coursing through their veinstarget women like you and me for only loving them like brothersfor giving the love to which they grew entitled, to women.
For years this memory aborted the raucous birthof my own desire to melt into curves, and I wonder
if I had found the courage to lean into the horizon of a woman
the way you did, what man of my own lineage
would have stood behind the bullet carrying me to death.
Your fingers were not given the chance to fully bloom
to the curves of the basketball you guarded.
The boys who dunked bullets into your backjealous of the way your curves twirled around themon courts and in courting girls.

16 • Sinister Wisdom 86 – Ignite!

The police are investigating your murder as a hate crime now.
I look at your murderers’ mug shots,from behind the brittle toughness
their scared eyes peek out at the world.
A reminder of the youth I spent with black boys
I loved like brothers.
The way we threw footballs over light posts,
turned grassy lawns into wrestling rings
jostling the pain of circumstance from our bodies together.
But this love has gangrened.
And we all know it,
the boys you and I grew up
running basketball courts and alleyways with
don’t carry us into womanhood
but come back to drag us into the ground.
complicit in our murder more than any other men.
Brothers I once greeted on street corners turn to strangers.
Instead of “hey shortie” introductions ending with hands
folding around each other in reverence,
too many times their palms contract into murder,
the love I have for them cringes.
I hold it quiet and conditionally.
We are crying on our knees
at the dimming puddle of your rainbow.
Homophobic slurs etched on wallsof the door you grew limber behind.
Mother trying not to buckle.

Summer 2012 • 17

Too Close
Charan P. Morris“You know, I hate gay people, so I let it be known,”“I am homophobic. It shouldn't be in the world or in the United States.”--NBA Player Tim Hardaway
Midday on 42nd St. platform
her head lay on my shoulder,next to elderly man with inebriated hands
as weathered as my grandfather’s.
Not long before the anger traveled to his fingers
depositing at knuckles,
he swung in a pendulum of fists
girlfriend and I paralyzed in wooden platform seats
we try not to flinch because the fear excites him.
Onlookers sneak apathetic peeks from the platform’s edge
like they swiped their humanity at the turnstile.
Blood drawn to his eyes ballooning
from aged sunken sockets.
My breath caught on a web spun in my chest,
maybe we reminded him that a woman once loved
his wife just as good,he swung
with one swing 14-year-old Kenny did
what my lover and I could not. Exiting community centerto evade Chi-Chi man slurs, but they caught up
casting stone after stone at flamboyant boy’sswiftly swaying hips, he couldn’t cake anymore.
Picked up 2-by-4 adrift on sidewalk
our silence crusted on the tips of its’ rusty nails.
He punched through the net of his perpetrators’ skin and skull
blood splintering his trembling fingers
before they could cast the word “faggot” again.
I have no wood of rusty nails
to wedge a distance between

18 • Sinister Wisdom 86 – Ignite!

the old man’s fist and my lover’s face.
This anger not strong enough to retaliate against hands
hardened like my grandfather’s,
can’t chemo the fear he cancered in me.
Sakia Gunn fixed in my fear.
A 15-year-old girl stuck up for her life on morning bus stop.
This time the old man who preyed on her, 29.
She unloaded “we are lesbians.”
Her plumbing had no need for pipes
but he entered, unclogging
chest cavity with pocket knife.
She lay draining, death blanketing her facewith the black of a Newark 3am.
Her memory already held my hands
next lover on 2 train platform.
Sakia’s girlfriend could not protect her.
The man with my grandfather’s weathered hands still swung,
our love venom in his wounds.
This venom poured from Kalid’s mouth while
reading about Sakia’s murder in my 9th grade class.
He recounts memory of kicking a grown man’s ass,“the fagot had his eyes on me.”I stood in front of a room full of students
trying to conceal how winded Kalid’s anger left me
felt like girlfriend and I were the brunt of his punches.
How do I compete with Tim Hardaway’s words in the eyesof young boys like Kalid who I am scared to see grow into men?
There are people who see streaks of hellfire
in the field of my lover’s skin where my fingers graze.
My silence as choking as a tongue swallowed.
There is no safe space for how I want to love her,
the whisper a woman’s skin makes against my own
how much I want to lay under her river rising,mouth open, gasping to drown.

Summer 2012 • 19

Kenny did what we only dream of doing,
He swung with anger we swallowed
no warning just rusty nails.
For every time a hate wielding knife could not be halted.
In secret we who could not overpower our attackers,
ripped with holes no public apology to patch
we watched the nails come down
and smiled.
Because Sakia cannot be brought backI couldn’t make Kalid understand,because Tim Hardaway is still allowed
his ignorance without consequences.
We smiled in secretbecause there are too many inebriated hands
we are still dying to bebecause I still wonder how much damage
that old man could have done,
what hospital bed could have been holding
pieces of her and I.

Charan Morris (Photo Credit: Max Luger)20 • Sinister Wisdom 86 – Ignite!

To The Wife of a Homosexual Man
Natasha Miller
When you catch him in bed
with another man do not panic
Forget where you hide the bullets kept for intrusive strangers
Althoughat this moment
he is both
Close the door like you apologize for walking into a room that
doesn’t belong to you
Leave immediately, like you are late for something
Think about your children
Do not be blinded by your heart
Do not suggest couples therapy
This is not an issue for your psychologist
He knew exactly what he was doing
Besides, the only thing worse than walking in on your husband
with a man
is waiting
for it to happen again
Do not curse him in church
Do not deny him visitsThose are still his children
He is still a child of God
Drinking
on a broken heart is dangerous
Stay away from bars
Avoid remembering that one time
With your out of the closet brotherknowthat is was probably true
Accept
The reason behind one crucifixion
You are planning divorce
The lawyers will say take him for everything
Dead men don’t offer much
He is planning suicideSummer 2012 • 21

Hide the bullets somewhere else
Think about your children
They are all you marriage was ever worth
You knew who he was when you met him
You chose to decline reality
Still, this is not your fault
this is not a fault
It’s what happens when grown men fear other men,
Churches
Rejection
Judgment
And hate crimes
they swallow what burns their throats
Turn princesses into bitter bitches
Turn their father in their graves
Realize, their knees are not strong enough for such a long fallfrom grace
And they come backTell you, that it was just a phase
Without hesitation you grow arms like Jesus
You forgive
As if it’s the only reason that you were born, to die for a man
That will not show you the same respect
I advise you to close the door
Tell him that he no longer lives there
Tell him,that he never lived there
Then you go on
raising your children to know
That being themselves
Is the one thing God
Will always forgive them for22 • Sinister Wisdom 86 – Ignite!

Natasha Miller (Photo Credit: Venti)

Summer 2012 • 23

How to “come out” and stay out
Natasha Miller
One thing you should do is not tell your mom and dad that you
are gay
Tell your parents that you are a graffiti artist at heart,
you have spray paint for emotions
Then hope that your home will not be listed as abandoned
because of the illegal colors that their tagger has left on
the windows
If you are out, always wear a watch
Because when the unexpected hit from a pipe, cracks up yourskull
Like the punch line of a bad Tracy Morgan joke
Look down at your wrist know exactly what time it was when
GOD
Treated you
Like a joke that his bloody sense of humor has been waiting years
to laugh at
When your fathers fist turn into space shuttle, and your facebecomes his moon
And he leaves your eyes all dark and crater like
You get up the next day
Wear the word faggot like an expensive pair of sunglasses
Carry Sakias Gunn in your mouth
Shoot back at every homophobe that tries to ruin you with words
Bring a fruitcake to every Christmas party that you’ll never bewelcomed atTell the kid curious about your gender that you are not a boy or agirl
You were born a hate crime
An ant under a magnifying glass
A reason to be burned
By the sun
And the Son of God

24 • Sinister Wisdom 86 – Ignite!

And the son of any family who believes that Westboro church
should stand outside
Of soldiers funeral picketing and pissing outdated bible verses on
their bravery
RememberYour status will always be two face book comments away fromyour family members raising money to bury you
An identity change and a cab ride away from you fiery torso
being found on he east side of Detroit
You will be thrown off airplanes for being in Love
Out of church for being in touchBanned from sports for being open
Raped by your military to seem more American
They will cross streets to not share a sidewalk
Die of thirst before drinking from a water fountain that you’ve
used
Throw cocktails through your colors
DL hugely will still say that this aint no civil right movement
dying over Taking Dick and picking Cotton are not thesameThis world cares nothing about how many clocks you own
There will never be a right time for you to be yourself
So when you leave home
Make sure your picture is exactly how you would like to beremembered
Just in case you return as someone else or not at all
Lastlywhen the footsteps behind you start to get closer and the groundstarts to sound like a gun range
Open up your arms, like your back is a bulls-eye
And a God is the target
Think back to that conversation you had with your parents about
being a Graffiti artist
then prepare for your emotions to be paintSummer 2012 • 25

Pride
Joanna Hoffman
The summer I turned 15, my grandmother got me
totally smashed at a wedding in New Jersey.
Somewhere between the third ABBA songand the fourth glass of champagne, she told me,
You know, someday you’ll have a wedding just like this.
And when you do, please don’t let them play any disco.
I didn’t know how to tell her that I probably
wouldn’t be having any wedding at all. That I
wore these bones like a voiceover when really,
I was in love with my best friend Kathleen.
I thought just maybe, if I held this itchunderwater long enough, it would float up blue.
I tried to claw the dripping want from my voicewhenever Kathleen asked me what I thought ofher boyfriend, snuffing out my drive-in imagination
and burning every lamp in my throat watching her.
I learned what shame feels like. I coated my skinwith postcard gleam, as if the best I could everhope for was to reflect someone else’s shine;
as if some parts of me were better off drowned
in a swimming pool of white-out.
But it is not in our nature to cower
before the mirror like this.
A person born blind will tilt their head backand extend their arms when they feel proud.
It is in our blood not to bake shame into ourbones, but to live boldly. And so now, all theseyears later, here is my pride—26 • Sinister Wisdom 86 – Ignite!

Joanna Hoffman (Photo credit: Emily Rose Kahn-Sheahan)Summer 2012 • 27

for every time I refused to allow the wet
blanket stare of strangers on the subway
smother this burn to hold her hand;for every time someone told me, Wow,
you don’t look gay, and I didn’t say, Thank you;for not letting my heart be strip-searchedby those who want to know if my love is
pure enough;because I have committed hate crimes against
myself for years and I already know all of
the tricks.
So, when my friend asks me why there is no
Straight Pride Parade, I tell her, You can’t
be proud of something you’ve never had to fight for.
This is for every wedding I watched fromthe sidelines; every fairy tale with stipulations;
every it’s a choice, it’s a phase, you’re disgusting;every swollen choke of shame I learned tocoat my throat with; every gay kid who
believed nothing would ever make this better
because home meant break the parts of you that
don’t fit into the plaster of who you’re supposed to be.
We already are exactly who
we are supposed to be.
Just last month, I woke up living in a citywhere I could actually get married one day.
I think back to that wedding in New Jersey
all those years ago—
how I was the last one to leave the dance floor,
makeup smeared and beaming; how my28 • Sinister Wisdom 86 – Ignite!

grandmother grabbed my hand and said,
I’m proud of you, with no if only’s or but’s
clinging to the underside of her voice,
how finally, after all these years,
I am able to say the same
to myself.

Summer 2012 • 29

The Choice
C.A. Popovich
Every Columbus Day week hundreds of women from allover the globe converge on the tip of Cape Cod for Women’s Week.
They enjoy Tea dances, comedians, music, and books. This was
my first trip to the artist town of Provincetown, Massachusetts.
After hearing so many wonderful things about the communityfrom friends, I was convinced I had no better choice for use ofthis year’s three remaining vacation days. My intention was tomeet the wonderful authors whom I knew only from pictures on
the back covers of their books.
When I booked my trip, I found there would be aconnecting flight from Boston to Provincetown, fondly referred toas Ptown. My breakfast simmered in my stomach as I anticipatedthe size of the plane that would whisk me across the span ofwater. I walked for twenty minutes to reach the diminutive Cape
Air terminal nestled in a far corner of the expansive Logan
airport. I had no checked baggage, so I balked when the airline
attendant tagged my carry-ons and demanded I put them on
their scale. I sensed the limitations of the plane when she thenrequested my weight. This was a commercial airline. Surely they
have licensed pilots I thought.
After I finished checking in, the attendant pointed toward
the gate. I circled the designated area a couple of times before I
located my gate number painted above a dark hallway leading toa stairway. I took a deep breath, straightened my spine, andhauled my suitcase down the stairs. There were five other people
lined up on the steps, so I shifted my computer bag on myshoulder and waited with my fellow passengers for the doors to
the runway to open.
“Follow me,” the smiling young man with the brightgreen vest said after checking our boarding passes. Struggling toignore the rain pelting my face and the wind grabbing at myjacket, I riveted my gaze on the miniature aircraft. The
expedition to the plane took only minutes. The smiling young
man in the now rain- soaked vest widened his smile as he assisted
his six travelers to negotiate the narrow three-step stairs into the30 • Sinister Wisdom 86 – Ignite!

tiny ten-seat cabin. There was no assigned seating, so we eachclaimed the first seat available. I spotted the empty co-pilot seatand speculated at the chances of one of my fellow vacationers
having skills to bring an airplane out of free-fall. I relaxed slightly
after scrutinizing the pilot. His salt-and-pepper hair indicated his
probable aeronautical experience, yet enough youth to allay fears
of his heart failing in mid-air. The darkening sky, increasing wind
gusts, and driving rain, however, did nothing to help settle mynerves.
The pilot offered the obligatory spiel regarding the safetyof the aircraft and I concentrated on his words as I evaluated thepotential risk posed by the rain seeping in through the sealaround the emergency exit closest to me. The light plane took off
with wings tipping side to side and me grasping my armrests. A
glance around the cabin revealed that my fellow passenger’s
white-knuckled grips matched my own.
I have no idea at what altitude the transformation
occurred, but the collective gasp indicated that all six of us
noticed at once. Scrambling for cameras, we ooed and aahed ourway across the bay. The pilot had wrestled the plane through the
turbulent clouds and we now floated above a layer of cotton-likeclouds with the sun bathing us in its protective warmth. The
blanket of clouds below us billowed in their ferocity, but we were
immune to their wrath. I decided the pilot did indeed know what
he was doing, and I relaxed.
The relief in the cabin was palpable and I speculate thatmy neighbor’s chattiness came from the release of stress. The trip
only lasted forty-five minutes, and the couple seated behind me
didn’t shut up for the rest of the trip. Over the din of thepropellers, I overheard snippets of conversation regarding her
aunt’s bursitis, her brother’s pending divorce, and her sister’sbout with cancer. Then she started on her uncle in a nursing
home and her mother’s current garage sale.
I spent the remainder of the flight content with theglorious view of the world. I would never have experienced thiswonder had I not chosen to fly rather than take the ferry or bus. I
can’t say the descent into the small Ptown airport was without
bumps. We had to break back through the storm clouds, butSummer 2012 • 31

landing on the runway and watching the sand dunes swell as weapproached was worth every bounce.
Will I fly again next year? Maybe I’ll try a new adventureand find out what the waves on the bay have to offer. I’ll makethat choice then.

32 • Sinister Wisdom 86 – Ignite!

Etiology of Cool
Stephania Byrd(for Terri L Jewell 1954-1995)
I am stroking the face of Oshun*and I can feel her sides
wet and without form flowing
cold in and out of me
through the carcoat,the chair, my houseto the coolness of this wood’s
shape, touch, and taste.
I am drinking the water of Olumare
under a baobab tree 1000 years oldin the heart of Dakar
breathing the serpent windpushing old eggs in the sand where Yemoja
spreads her skirts sothat I may eat from her largesse.
I am here on a bird’s tongue skimming
the salty ice-fires
boiling hands
Those hold and caress without her form.

*Oshun, Olumare, and Yemoja are orisha, part of an ancestralpantheon that is revered because these ancestors were cool like water.
The power in these names survived the middle passage and feted today
in Africa and the New World.

Summer 2012 • 33

Persephone Departs The Upcountry
Stephania Byrd
With snow on the ground at Thanksgiving
hunters gather in the first blows of
winter. Fox carrion lies at the top of hills.
A dog hears a singing wren
and lunges at the deer blood on the barkdripping in icicles in the east light.
The wind-fall sounds
shotguns
fired at startled does. Laterthe air in the igniting space heater
will boom behind mounted antlers
and trophy heads.
Death crawls as surely as
trucks climbing
north in an ice storm.
As her daughter rushes howling
through the wall,a haunted motherblows her last leaf
to stiffen in
the snow.

34 • Sinister Wisdom 86 – Ignite!

Turning Pentecostal
Stephania Byrd
Many people ask how I come to beliving in Cleveland and why I left for
two weeks when the Bellerphron Pentecost
Gospel Singers for Jesus and the EverlastingLight came to town.
I’d just moved home to Bellerphron, Ohioto recover from what I thought was fatigue,
but was really a flu bug that had built
a condominium around my heart.
I was hanging with old family acquaintances,
Ada Jean and Jeremiad,looking for work, in general helping my motherand dad by trying to keep up with domestic chores
that I had avoided religiously when living alone.
Anyway, like I said, these old acquaintanceswere exactly that because my family has no friends-and except for the scandal I caused by goingwith boys into the woods for salamanders at the church
picnic when I was nine--these people knew nothingof my last twenty years after high schooloutside Bellerphron.
Ada Jean and Jeremiad were quite naturally curious;
everytime we all got together and I said something
weird by Pentecostal standards, Ada Jean would
become all flustered and Jeremiad, who believedin leaving the door open just in case Jesus stopped bywould say, “She’s just individualistic, Ada Jean.”As I said, I had been looking for work, going down
to Manpower,
going over to the many plastics factories
that the city fathers had welcomed with open pockets,
when Ada Jean called and said
there was an opening for an officer in the probation office,who didn’t mind being “in the field.”

Summer 2012 • 35

(In the field means traveling
all over the county, tracking down violatorsand interrogating their families about their
whereabouts.) It sounded like the job for me.
That’s when I found out that I was a class D
felony. You see I had not been in the woods
with any boys since that fateful summer in 1959. I
had instead cultivated my charms for the edificationand delight of women--big women, skinny women,
short women, tall women--I loved them all.
This presented something of a quandary for me
for I was beginning to get tired of Jeremiad’s
stories about his wife Barbara’s cousin, who wasjust like me--alone, no man to care for her (care wasstrongly emphasized), and worse--no babies to complete
the circle of her woman’s life. But Barbara’s cousin
had left the door open for Jesus and don’t you know
when He walked in, He brought a man with him.
I was also a little afraid of Barbara, who was known
for her fasting and vigilante tendencies--she was rumoredto have called the police on my third cousin Eugene,
who showed up to work at the Palais Royale department
store wearing their latest spring fashion.
But I finally decided to take the chanceand bet on Jeremiad's help, his door being
the more open of the three.
Me, Ada Jean, and Jeremiad were taking Barbara
to work the night I decided to be forth coming and tell my
newfound companions that if Jesus ever did come knocking,he best be coming with Naomi or Ruth, otherwise I just was
not interested. It was raining and the streets were wet
and Barbara and Ada Jean were trying real hard to get me
to commit to the tent revival near Lebanon that coming weekend
when Jeremiad started to pull out in front of a truck. Well
I just as smooth as pie said, “Look out, baby!”1(I don’t know what possessed me. I must have forgotten
who I was riding with ‘cause) Barbara said,“What did you call my husband?”I did not so much as speak one word. I pretended I’d36 • Sinister Wisdom 86 – Ignite!

been struck deaf. But Barbara was like a terrier on a rat,
she was not letting go.
Jeremiad laughed and said, “Oh she said Barbie!” trying
to clean the mess up. But Ada Jean started pipingwith her two cents about that’s not what I’d said and well
you understand how I come to move to Cleveland.
I was talking to my mother and she tells me a new
scandal in my name has replaced the dead dog skinks of
1959. When my name is mentioned nowadays,
folk talk how Glynn Allen turned Pentecostal.

Summer 2012 • 37

All of It
Amanda Laughtland
When I saw The Belle of Amherst
the actress cried as Miss Dickinson said
the heart wants what it wants. I had learned thisadjusting to my heart medication
and am learning it now, adjusting to my heart
and a different rushing of bloodin your direction. I drifted off
during the play, thinking of Miss Dickinson
and your house and how I don’t sleep
soundly yet, lying awake and loving all of it
from the flowers on your bedroom wallpaper
to the oatmeal you fix for breakfast
with almonds for you and apples for me.

38 • Sinister Wisdom 86 – Ignite!

From the Shore
Amanda Laughtland
I know your stroke, your kick,the turn and bob of your head
above Rattlesnake Lake
where I sometimes lose sight of you
behind rafts and beach balls—
then you pop up again, buoyant
and brilliant in the 90-degree heat,
your back and shoulders safe
beneath the sheen of sunscreen
I helped you apply, both hands
under the straps of your top,
palms flush against your skin.

Summer 2012 • 39

Learning
Amanda Laughtland
You said the Greeks said “know thyself”
and “all things in moderation”
and I agree it may be best
to know me moderately, a woman who loves
cookies, movies, Converse hi- and low-tops,
books, cats, cardigan sweaters
and—immoderately—you. Know me deeply
and there’s the mire of things
I’m still learning. You know how I thought
I didn’t want kids? I’ve learned
it was only that I’d never known any
nor any adult who could surprise me
into imagining myself with a family.

40 • Sinister Wisdom 86 – Ignite!

ScatteredSarah Brooks
In the subalpline regions of Nepal, it is impossible to dig
into the hard, rocky ground to bury dead bodies – and anyway,most Nepalese are Buddhist or Hindu, and believe the body is
only a container for the soul. When a person dies, then, it iscustomary for the priests to ceremoniously take the body to ahigh place and cut it into pieces for the circling vultures to
consume. It’s called a “sky burial”. Circling vultures alight, tearmeat, consume, incorporate human flesh into their living bird
bodies and then take wing. Thus, the Nepalese literally scatter
their dead into the world. Ultimate recycling.
Mary Oliver, the poet, wrote, “Tell me about despair,yours, and I will tell you mine./ Meanwhile, the world goes on.”And on. Each of us will die, and with every death another baby
will burst crying into the world, and the world goes on. All isimpermanent. All we see as solid is only an illusion. The great
Rocky mountains are crumbling slowly; the wind wears themdown by inches, shapes them into curves that would be foreign tothe men and women who scaled their slopes a century ago. In
Hawaii, lava builds a new mountain. Beneath the ocean, plates
shift. Change, change, change. The whole world is restless.
Once, my grandmother, determined always to get rid of
the past and move on into the present, marched out of her housewith her wedding dress – and other items – gathered in her arms.
She was bound for the burn pile, which is where farm peopleburn all sorts of things, including leaves and sticks, dead pigs,
yellowed wedding dresses. I imagine she didn’t attach theemotion to the dress that the rest of us would later, hearing thestory. She wasn’t sentimental, my grandmother. She wore thisnecklace every day: a blob of smashed gold, that had been her
wedding ring and my grandfather’s, now melted together andsmashed. I imagined she had marched to the jeweler in anger andgrief in the days after my grandfather killed himself, but when I
asked her she shrugged and said, “No. I just did it.” It must havebeen like that with the wedding dress, too. But she didn’t get toburn it, since my aunt Barbara happened to drive down the long

Summer 2012 • 41

gravel driveway just at that moment; she honked wildly to get mygrandmother’s attention and then ran to her, pulling the wedding
dress from her and holding it close. As if the dress itself was notjust a container.
The Blackfeet buried their dead high in trees—I suppose
to prevent wolves and bears from digging up the bodies andeating them in those barren Montana plains, but maybe also to
get the dead closer to the bird gods, and closer to flight. They leftfood and water hanging in the buckets from those burial trees,
and if the ravens came to partake of the offerings, it was the sameas the dead, for the ravens were assumed to be gods. The Sioux,
who also buried their dead in the trees – many of the plains
people did, evidently – painted the bodies with red earth first.
Earth to sky. Earth in the sky. Here, here. The dead are waiting,up there in the trees.
Lia – before – she used to joke that when she died, shewanted to be cremated and then rolled into cigarettes to besmoked by all her friends. But when she did die, and so suddenly,
I didn’t know who our friends were anymore, and I have neverrolled a cigarette, and I couldn’t imagine how to get her ashes,
anyway. That’s not the right of the female partner. Go, gay
marriage. Give us the rights to hold each other even when one of
us is dust, ready to be smoked. She’s stored, now, in somecontainer in her ex-husband’s garage, because he has legal
custody of their children, and I have no right to anything, except
all these memories, and the way her fingertips felt on my neck,and a thousand snapshots of her, including her silhouette at 5a.m., naked, drinking coffee while she stared out the window towhere the mountains were supposed to be.
In ancient Rome, it was common to shave the entire
body to show mourning – Alexander, at the death of Hephastin,even cut off the manes and tales of his horses and took down thebattlements of the cities. It was also common practice to mutilate
oneself, or to scar oneself in recognition that all was changed now
that a beloved person had died. That might have replaced theeven more ancient idea of sacrificing oneself to die alongside thedeceased – something desirable, still, when a beloved person nolonger lives in the world, but now socially unacceptable.

42 • Sinister Wisdom 86 – Ignite!

I told Lia once that I would scar my face – a friend ofours overheard me say it, as we entered her house for a dinnerparty – if it would cause her to cease her increasingly constantcomparisons between us. I did not want to be beautiful, but only
to see her wholly accept herself, and so make it easier for her toabsorb my love. The more she hated herself, the more shescorned my love. We should have scarred each other, visibly, so
the world wouldn’t be so surprised, later.
In the months before my grandmother died, she ceased
nearly all activity except for watching hours and hours of TV,
especially game shows – especially re-runs of game shows. It
became impossible to talk to her; she couldn’t maintain theconversation because her memory had become so full of holes.
But she could play “Jeopardy” and call out letters with Pat Sajakas the Wheel of Fortune spun, and make bets on “The Price isRight”. I would sit in the lazy boy next to her lazy boy and wewould eat M&Ms and watch those game shows, and sometimes
she would agree to eat a little healthy food that I had cooked. I
was a purist, then; I cooked kale and black-eyed pea soup andspooned it religiously into my grandmother’s mouth. I wish I had
made her fried chicken; I wish I had gotten her more beers. What
did it matter by then? She wanted to buy a vowel; she was ready.
In many ancient cultures, it was common – according tooral histories – for mourners to wail loudly in the presence of thedead. In Carib culture, mourners propped the body up on a seat
for ten days, offered the dead person food and drink and tried tocajole it back to the world of living with comical jokes and taunts,
until they finally gave up and threw food on the corpse’s headand buried it.
I didn’t even get to close Lia’s eyes with my gentle
fingers. I would have. I would have curled up beside her and let
the warmth of my body seep a little longer into hers. But then? In
my mind, I am part of a barbaric, ancient culture. I paint her
body: swirls of purple and red and yellow and blue. And then I
build a pyre and I shout and cry her name, my hair shaved off,my own body painted to match hers, my face scarred by my own
hand. No one dares come near. They know this ritual. They
respect me and my grief. I am not just there – not just not 2,000
miles away and docilely standing by as a coroner and police liftSummer 2012 • 43

her body – I am the only one with the right to do what should be
done: this ritual, this. The pyre is built. Somewhere in thedarkness, a great circle of people has gathered, and there is more
wailing, but the night is mostly between me and her. I pull her
children from the circle, guide their hands to touch her brow, herheart, her hands, her brow again, then send them out into thedarkness again – so it is only me and her holy body. My lover. I
knew her body as no one else, even her, knew her body. I close
my eyes and know every scar, every mole, every irregular place,
every curve. And then I lift my head and I shout her name to thereverberate hills, and the crowd echoes it, and I shout it again,
and the crowd echoes it. I leap onto the pyre, then, a flaming
torch in my hand. A murmur from the crowd, a cry.
Somewhere, my child shouts, “Mommy!” In thedarkness, the moon – I am confused. Aren’t we alone here? The
torch sparks and flames, and I straddle her body. I could lie down
gently, my body against hers, skin to skin; I could kiss her and put
warmth in her skin again with the flame I could ignite beneath us.
The body is merely a container. She is not beneath me. The windcaresses me; she is there. I wail her name again – then lean to kissher still lips and drop the fire before I leap away to the ground –and the pyre bursts into flame, and she is a goddess of fire, Pele,
her hair an orange halo and the swirled paint on her skin a visionof creation, and – converted – I leap toward the flame, butsomeone restrains me – a small hand, or the wind. Flame, flame.
I want to run to catch all the pieces of her that, charred, float into
the sky.

44 • Sinister Wisdom 86 – Ignite!

Let me tell you about my twig lines
Shae Savoy
Stick figures marching in procession through woodedness, meadow sunlight leaf-drink, gregarious all theveins, the flocking of fleece we funnel ourselves crickle crack snap like twigs
under the Boot.
The old woman who lived in a shoesang dirges doing dishes served drudge up
with soups. The Boot crunch, crush, dishraglimp bag you call me old hag and I say
tis only a shroud, chrysanthemum.
Lilybirds flutter at my throat, rubies
clutched in their beaks. A sparking
bud of true. Juice the night
open, slide sweet and pliant on your back,be open to Her, drain away the
Drano, it’s clogging your pores. Become
porous and malleable around your innerdelicate twigs, the birdboned farmhouse called
Fascist: a strong word I know but comesthe Boot, comes the boulder, whistle your saxophonebreath, your blues are your breadwinner. Let
the night spiral around you, grip cups with
furtive fingers, bring faery elixir to lips. Join
strands of leaf-hands into rattley sheath,march onward, into the city.
Once there build bridges, build books, build fires everywhere.

Summer 2012 • 45

Your rags are your coat, hang the blooming
diamonds from the eaves, gather your bushels withall us Eves and remember your name that resilient grewunder the Boot.
Do not try on the boot, do notcollect the bones for bristling, let theetchings dissolve under the acid ofgoat eyes and cream eccentric
into a bowl, make it your breakfast.
Break fast away from the hollowland,stronghold of static, the limpid light offlickering screens.
Remember:
your moss,
your lichen,liverwort tea.

46 • Sinister Wisdom 86 – Ignite!

She who floods like a river
Shae Savoy
For Amanda Murray, in the spirit of Judy Grahn
I am sprinkler system, gemini in
my outbursts, jumping from stable
to stable filigreed to tipsy—flooding
is like sleeping—the creeping in of
all that spidery mass, delicate
heavy. Flood the peach trees, shake thepigeons free—I am engorged with her, theroundnesses, what is cushion. What is
diamond tooth, prism dazzle about her
center, she who floods, who causes therising of whale breech sea horse stable—
she is my stable—my rockforce, the sledgehammers can’t reach me
her curl of toe her nook—
blast-root blood typing away
click the keys, in the kitchen popcorn
rises. She brings me butter and I while—the flood rips free, my fins grow, append
the night, append the dramaturge of mythirty years’ sinking.
In the waves contusions, swish

Summer 2012 • 47

swish tail swoop, scoops up the broken
mornings, the orphanings, the siren
satellites from my scales, I am the flood,
she is the kneecap in the sky.
Rotate, revolve and return, reload
and revolver. Shoot ink jets, printer potato,bake the missings, flood, the river will
not be pushed but spread like ink blots
on paper, a fine papyrus her skin,her creases add texture.
Blameless jellyfish squirt
squid-gallop, they seek only free,
don’t mean the poison they
tweet, little water-birds, flutteringliquid—the jellyfish, the shark—these beasts are not for shame—
they’re our scars, shining
pinkly beneath the ripple’s blue.
What is true is my fat feather
quill grows flab flapping languid—I spotted this in the mirror
while my poems did yoga. I’ve
been feeding her too much sugar,
too much sweet lesbian—

48 • Sinister Wisdom 86 – Ignite!

feather lingers restful, this scares—
sacreds me, I of the iron kite,
But mirror shines empty, without
projection, just the presence. Just
the fact of it—of exist. Plain andwithout bauble—exist. Clean
sheets. Vegetables in the fridge.
A cat named Romeo.
A couch and tree.
Pears.
Exist.

Summer 2012 • 49

Circus Act
Devi K. Lockwood
Birds flit and dovetail into one another,over wires, upside down. I pass a birdbath,your name in the sidewalk. I in neonhues of you, different shades of hesitation.
I’ve always been afraid to lose you by midnight.
At this hour the clouds are little islands
to hop between, layers reborn in company.
See them there? The hunch-backed jugglers
above the city’s night, illuminated by the cruxof the moon. How many first things fall
not knowing their destinations?
Under billowing striped tents do we drift
in a haphazard dance between sewer
and the passerby’s three inch heels? Do wepaint the night in hieroglyphs? The room attachedto the lighted window pollutes this most pure blackness
and three blocks away evening floods the sea.
I drew you as you slept in sea foam green
and darker shades – amethyst for your eyelid creases,
the place where elbow disappears into forearm,your mind somewhere quieter than the draining Atlantic.
Take me to the place where flying things have no shadow.
I will rest there and release the elephantsfrom my shoulders and heart.

50 • Sinister Wisdom 86 – Ignite!

Questions for an Intellectually Confident Woman
Devi K. Lockwood
what do you look like what do you wear
what did you tell yourself this morning in the mirror
if you could would you change any part of your bodydo you have a favorite season
are you in love what do you love
do you often ask questions are you told that you talk too muchdo you consider yourself a feminist how do men respond to youwhat is your work can you see the world through another’s eyes
what does that look likewhen choosing a seat around an oval tablesurrounded by eleven others
would you sit in the same chair every day
would you change your response
based on the gender of those eleven individuals
tell me about your motherwhat do you share how are you different
what barriers have you overcome where do you feel most
comfortable
who are your role models what do they look likedo you wash the dishes are you freeSummer 2012 • 51

Morning Blues (and/or Greens)
Vanessa VitielloIn the morning when you wake up there’s a moment you
decide you’re not going to rebel. You see your chance to beanother kind of person, to be and do and feel all the things you
wish that you could do and feel and you reject them in favor of
email checking, your coffee-pot, and jam on toast. Whatever you
always do that’s what you do again and what’s more you pretend
there was never a moment of decision and that dreaming is astate entirely apart from waking.
Your coffeepot would never miss you. It isn’t thanking
you for your fidelity. It’s just a coffeepot but you have turned it
into a prison guard and for that it’s started to despise you. The
hatred comes out thin and black and bitter and no measure of
cream or sugar can overwhelm it. Better to drink it black and faceit, rather than drown in the denial of non-dairy creamer.
The tea you keep for company might have been more
forgiving; but you didn’t choose tea did you? You didn’t choose
to be somebody other than yourself this morning but you’ll try
not to let it bother you, you’ll say to yourself (somewhere so deep
inside you don’t quite know you’re saying it); tomorrow is anotherday. Maybe tomorrow you’ll sip tea or start a rock band.
You remember, oh I’m sure that you do remember,when you were a child and you tried so hard to see the fairies in
the garden. You never saw them, not a single god or devil orghost or dragon either and that was your own fault, you know.
Your fault, for not allowing yourself the eyes to see the magic. It
wasn’t… It could not have been that gods and dragons don’t exist.
Deep down you know you have yourself to blame for only everseeing acorns.
It’s like that now. Only it’s possibilities you don’t allow
yourself to see, because you’re scared of what might happen if
you suddenly became the sort of person who’s allowed to be
haunted by errant spirits, or who goes to Barcelona for no reason
other than the hatred of your coffeepot.
You could go, though. Any morning you could go. You
even have a portion of your savings which you think of as your

52 • Sinister Wisdom 86 – Ignite!

“eloping-with-your-chatroom-sweetheart” money. Your
Barcelona (unless you feel like Bombay or Bogota or Bangladesh
instead) impulsivity-funds. Your stash you could withdraw in cash
in case you’re ever on the run from the police, or, alternatively, if
there’s a beautiful stranger on the run from the police and when
she looks at you with those big blue-or-green eyes you find you
couldn’t bear to disappoint her.
Not that you’d really do it if there was a stranger, which
there isn’t. You’d think you were too old, or wonder if she was agrifter. Or most predictably of all you’d not even remember yoursavings-in-case-of-impulsivity and never even waver in your
eternal devotion to getting in to work on time. You’d turn awayfrom her, with a sorry shaking of your head, and the dental
hygienist you sit next to on the subway would have to step in totake your place at the last minute. At least the blue-or-green eyed
girl and the lovely twenty-something dental hygienist who you sit
next to on the subway would be happy. Even without a readystash of impulsivity money they’d make it off the train to safety,
and your only contribution would be daydreaming them into
existence.
Seriously, though, it’s all well and fine to play with theidea of not going to work today, but if you didn’t go would youeven have anything worthwhile to spend your freedom on? Morelikely you’d politely and apologetically call out sick, then spend
the day completely at loose ends. You’d sit in successive coffee
shops, reading the paper and wondering where people who want
to start a rock band go to meet each other. Or when the next
blue-or-green eyed girl was scheduled, or if the new tech at work
was messing with the settings on your scanner. The problem, andyou know this with absolute certainty as you sit drinking blackcoffee and spreading raspberry jam out to the very edges of yourtoast, is you and nothing more than you yourself. That’s why therock band, even in your imagination, even before you’ve tried toget a band together or learn to play the drums or anything, isbound to fall apart because nobody has the time to practice andyou and your band mates all feel slightly silly and too old to justbe starting now.
Maybe the dental hygienist and the blue-or-green eyed
girl will start a band together. They’ll pick up the old cello andSummer 2012 • 53

clarinet (which neither of them has touched since seventh grade)and dedicate their songs to Sappho and the mother goddess.
They’ll probably make every single one of the hygienist’s friends
cringe with embarrassment, over the clarinet and the mothergoddess parts especially, but won’t those two at least be living
instead of just existing?
If you catch yourself over the dishwasher, as you put
away your plate and coffee cup, thinking that they might agree tolet you be their manager if you’ll invest your savings in a van andhelp drive them to gigs some evenings after work or on theweekends, don’t be afraid. You’re not going insane; you’re notsuffering from too many hours staring at the Rorschach scanner
images, working to form them into body parts, or brain injuries.
You’re having a brush with sanity just by imagining the blue-orgreen eyed girl and trying to fit yourself somewhere into the storyof the life you’re making up for her. Maybe she’d let you play the
bongos, if you had a set of bongos. If you could play them, andyou had a set of bongos, and if the blue-or-green eyed girl reallyexisted.
If she existed, and if she told the dental hygienist she wason the run from the police, and if the hygienist stopped reading
the mystery novel you saw her reading on the subway yesterday(the one about a burglar who has to solve the murder with help
from his scrappy lesbian sidekick), then the hygienist might get off
with her three stops too early, probably at Downtown Crossing.
They’d go for breakfast in the first pastry shop they saw andhalfway through her story the blue-or-green eyed girl would
laugh and she’d admit she made it up, the whole thing, just forthe chance to talk to a girl so pretty. They’d blush, and maybe thehygienist would pretend to be annoyed and angry, but then she’dlet herself be cajoled into calling off from work and maybe going
off with the blue-or-green eyed girl somewhere cool and different,
like the aquarium or the fine arts museum.
Then while you’d done the sensible thing and gotten in towork on time they’d end up staring into giant fish tanks the same
way that you’ll be staring deeply into pictures of MRI sliced
images, wriggly wormy brain scans of wriggly wormy patients,
but while you’ll still be thinking about the blue-and-green eyed
girl she and her dental hygienist will by now be thinking only of54 • Sinister Wisdom 86 – Ignite!

each other. A brain scan might tell you the places inside the skullthat love can cause to light up like the Fourth of July fireworks,
but it hasn’t yet explained why you’ve doomed yourself to write
about it for peer review and publication but never really and truly
given yourself over to the practice.
But enough of this. It’s silliness, you know it’s silliness.
Personification of inanimate objects, coffeepots dispensing hatredand gods and blue-or-green eyed girls and fairies in your garden,
when your family didn’t even have a garden, just a big yellow
forsythia bush which bloomed in early April. You had a big
backyard instead, with oak trees and a swing and what you
remember most isn’t questing after fairies back behind and/or
inside the big forsythia, but rather swinging as high as you could
swing and jumping off just when it looked like you might haveswung so high that you could jump your whole house and land on
the lawn in front of it. You remember hanging in the air forever,even if forever lasted only for a moment. When you grew up you
studied physics because you fell in love with Einstein. Einstein,
who taught you that free falling is the same as being motionless.
Falling, or flying, was all relative and you thought, yes, that’s just
how I thought about it in that forever moment, the one before I
submitted under gravity and fell back down again.
If you could only go to Einstein now, and give him yourconfession, he’d tell you love is relative. Love for science fades thesame way love between a blue-or-green eyed girl and a dental
hygienist would, in time. How unprofessional of you to havethought that anything could last forever. Even a high school
textbook covers entropy, the Second Law, the one that Murphy’s
Laws are based on. Its time you put this nonsense of the morning
well behind you, and go into your bathroom to shower and look
for the signs of time’s arrow in the light which bounces off yourmirror and shows you your own reflection. A grey eyed woman
with glasses and not a hint, not even an inkling of rebellion, notyou, not for a moment. Nothing of rebellion, even after you drip
and wring your hair out from the shower, and the blue-green
color of the towel round your body is picked out by your eyes,
and they look like they might be a little blue-or-green themselves,
if only for a moment.

Summer 2012 • 55

Storm Between Lovers
Karen Norris
Moments pass like rain
the storm ends before it begins
wetness touches my faceyour embrace is like thunderreverberating through my soul
your kiss sends lightning bolts
through my veins
the tornado inside me istearing my solitude to shreds
completely intertwined
wrapped up in the silencewords unspoken need no explanation
Is it worth the risk involved?
Do you jump or shall you remain
within the depths of revive?

56 • Sinister Wisdom 86 – Ignite!

Her CallKaren Norris
A fire burns
deep within
igniting my past
flames licking my wounds
death calls
she is an illusion
breaking my resistancean elaborate scheme
fighting for sanity
torn between my vices
living in suppression
cut a little deeper
red surrenderSummer 2012 • 57

A Night of Lust
Nancy Santos
Touch me gently like you do,kiss me slowly, ever so slowly…
The night is long, ever so long,and I want to feel the warmthof your lips, of your very soul.
Touch my lips,
feel my very existence,ever so tender…touch me slowly…
Caress my lips,
for the night is young
and we’ve only just begun.
Hold me tightly in your arms
and I promise I will go far
long into the nightcaressing you
ever so slowly …
holding you ever so tight.

58 • Sinister Wisdom 86 – Ignite!

Learning the Way
Kyle Anne Bates
You know
how I am about this –language. I think it’s some kind of god,
like sex. The trick
is what you strip
away. I tell you I can make youcome without even touching.
You sit across from me
throwing gauntlets of strong silence
down between us.
I tell you to touch what we talkabout, and you do,but you can’t make the words.
It’s easy, I say,
but you can’t put your mouth around them.
You can’t say with your tongue
what you’ll do with it.
I say it will shove us closer,
yank us together into a knot
if you tell me where to pull you
apart, and how to spell itin there. You wiggle
in your chair, and stand.
Vowels become consonants.
T’s get crossed. Punctuation enters
the picture. You walk away
making hard K sounds.
I measure
how many feetlie between us.
You can’t stand it.
You go out and drink with your friends.
You make words
for other things.
They think I am a genius

Summer 2012 • 59

and a pain in the ass.
You drink to that,and come home,sneak in, under the moonand lay with your backto me shaking, and giving
directions - how to get in,
and where to go then.
You shiver in your brain
and put a hand on the place you mean.
My hinges swing.
I taste the body and the blood.
Talk to me. Tell me where it feels dirty
and what the password is.
God knows
I love to open you,but I love it even morewhen you open yourself.

60 • Sinister Wisdom 86 – Ignite!

My Tribe
Kyle Anne Bates
Heavy soled,ass kicking,broad shouldered babes
whistling the songof their love for you,
flexing the shapeof their desire for you,teaching you how hard,
and where, and how long,
and what you would do
if you could choose anything.
T-shirts,
chains,tattoos life plowed deeply
into theirforeheads.
You know her.
You dream her, and try to force
her out of your dreams.
You think she is dirty
and all your little secrets
rolled into one.
You think she knows
the things you don’t
let yourself
know.
You think you will turn and run,that there is still time,that you still haveyour own power,
but then she leaps ahead
and gets the door.

Summer 2012 • 61

Nora
Kyle Anne Bates
Matisse and the Venus of Willendorf,!
noble and round,!
sun and moon,!
squash and flower.
She feels like!
the source dough, made from!
history and ancient yeast. !
The kind they keep special,
deep in a cave,!
waiting for a documentary!
only she will watch.
Cans of blue and brown!
tip and mix, blend into
ladle-like strokes!
on the canvas of a vintage dress,
tastes like chocolate, life-changing
breads, trees, growing, planets and suns
orbit around my hurts and fears,
wrap branches like! flannel shirts,
crossing their arms! over my heart,!
saving me! softly.
All the metaphorsof color and warmth,
earth and food, !
ripe and open,
good, worth it, seasoned, hot, !
and still there when you wake up, !
nights and seasons - one better than the next these are her things, her list,
her table of contents –the feast she has madefor me alone.

62 • Sinister Wisdom 86 – Ignite!

Significator
Julie E. Justicz
Madame Sosostris, famous clairvoyante, untied thesilvery tendrils of the scarf and pulled back the four corners, one
by one, to reveal the Tarot. She let the scarf drop next to Ivy on
the smooth marble steps and began shuffling, deep in meditation,
oblivious to the second-period bell and the jostle of Westmont
Academy students pushing past into Candler Hall. She cut andrejoined the deck, then flipped the top card.
“Holy shit, Ivy, it’s the Tower again,” Harper Reeves’s
gypsy persona, like many of her passions, could be a fleeting andvolatile thing. “That’s like the fifth time this card has thrown itself
at me. Freaky, huh?”“Freaky,” Ivy agreed, pulling her collar up against the
winter chill. She was freezing her ass off, using up a free period
when she should have been preparing for her chemistry final, andall just to indulge Harper’s newfound penchant for cartomancy.
Harper insisted on doing the readings outside; the winter air
helped Madame, her temperamental alter ego, concentrate.
Harper was the kind of girl who could insist on such things; Ivy
was the kind who did not put up much of a fuss. Not when it
came to Harper, at least. Out on the bone cold steps, or buried in
the swampy clang of the school’s boiler room, what did it matter?
An hour alone with the most beautiful girl in the senior class, who
had for unknown reasons chosen her as a sidekick: Who was Ivy
to question the cards?
“So,” the recomposed Madame said, “Your reading
begins with zee Tower. Interesting.” She bit her lower lip inconcentration, pushed a vagabond strand of her long black hairbehind her ear, no doubt trying to remember the cheat sheet thatcame with the Tarot deck. “Tower ees significator. Where you
are in life now.” She peered into the image, trying to get a clue.
“Madame Sees beeg change ahead. . . cataclysmic change foryou, Ivy Novotny.”
Is she messing with me? Ivy wondered. “Hey, don’t I get topick my own card?”“Madame alvays pick significator.”

Summer 2012 • 63

“So I’m stuck with the Tower?” Should she laugh this off
or look concerned? She could never quite figure out when Harper
was serious and when she was joking. Misreading the tone of theirinteractions seemed to be her chief fault in Harper's eyes. Harper
would turn in a quick second if she thought Ivy got it wrong.
Lighten up, she might say, or the equally unexpected converse, For
once, Ivy, just be serious.
“Cataclysmic change," Ivy tried, "Could be a goodthing, right?” Sometimes, she screwed it up on purpose, because
she liked the delicate tension of annoying Harper coupled withthe promise of more time together, as she tried to earn her way
back into favor.
“Quit fooling around.” Harper tapped the deck. “Pose aquestion, for the reading.”
The Motherpeace Tarot cards were circular instead of
the rectangular, which made them as hard to handle, as they
were to interpret. Harper had developed a loping shuffle; shewould arc them from hand-to-hand, almost as if she were
juggling. Ivy had not known quite what to say when Harper gave
her them a few weeks earlier. Not for her 18th birthday, (which
she had already missed) but far too early for Christmas. A gag
gift, then? Or something more personal? The $16.95 price tag
still on the shrink-wrap made Ivy err on the serious side.
“Awesome,” she had said, ripping off the plastic. Wanting toplease Harper could make her over-play. “These are amazingcards. I love fortune telling.” Even if the gift began as anamusement, Harper now read the cards with a convert’s
intensity. Silence. Madame Sosostris speaks. Well, if she was all about
Tarot this month or the rest of senior year, for that matter, so be
it. Always intriguing to have her arrange the spread, turn overeach card and reveal her feelings about life, about Ivy, on a givenday. She could be so generous, old Madame S, seeing beeeg love,verrry long life, rolling her r’s dramatically whenever she felt
openhearted. She could also switch into a mean old bitch.
Cataclysmic change.
Ivy shuddered in her corduroy jacket. Trees aroundcampus held their quivering gold leaves, feeling lucky to be so
bestowed and knowing that a strong blast at any moment would
strip them of their worth. Her mother's scarf, fallen on the marble64 • Sinister Wisdom 86 – Ignite!

step, was made of the thinnest cotton; strands of tinsel threadcriss-crossed the fabric. Ivy picked it up, held it to her nose:
Cigarette smoke, a little dust, a scratch in the back of her throat.
She had purloined the scarf from a basket on the floor in Mom’s
closet, where she kept the silky wraps she wore on her teachingdays at the university. Such luxuries could be liabilities when Ivy's
younger brother Benjy was around. At fourteen, he still had themental ability of a two year old. He would stretch and shred
anything pretty, then stuff it in the toilet, just for a laugh. Even
though Benjy was away now (however long the latest in a longline of group homes might last), Mom still kept all her silks andjewelry hidden, like love letters from an old boyfriend.
Ivy tied the scarf around her neck for some warmth and alittle magic, too. Maybe she could absorb from it some of Mom's
ethereal beauty and do to Harper what Harper now did to her.
“Come on then, Madame Sosotris. Tell me what my futureholds.”“Just a second, Novotny; you're a total mess,” Harper's
concentration broke again, as she leaned into Ivy, took the scarf
ends, tied them together and rearranged the fringe. “There . . .
much better. Now . . . You are the querent, so you have to posethe question. Place your hand on the deck. Focus.”
Ivy studied the significator card hunting for clues. A thin,
naked woman with fire coming out of her head sat on a tower.
Her hair was long and wild, streaked with gray, and there was fire
blazing in the background. Lightning bolts shot down from thesky, as if at her command. Did Mom sometimes wish thatlightning could strike her family, once, twice, thrice? Strike one,
without question, would be for Benjy. He’d been kicked out of six
group homes already; who knew how long number seven would
last? When Dad came home from work at night and said Looks like
we finally figured it out, huh? Mom looked as if she could spit. Her
second bolt of lightning had to be for Dad, then, the relentless
optimist who wouldn't or couldn't give up his crusade to find apermanent placement for his problem child. And the third andfinal strike? No contest, was there? Hugo, Ivy's middle brother, at
sixteen, was stoic and beautiful -- rose early every day, rode his
bike to the Westmont campus, changed in the varsity locker
rooms, and then launched his body off the diving board, over andSummer 2012 • 65

over again, whipping and chastising his physical self into
perfection. Hugo – his name even meant “good soul” – would
have been any mother's dream son. Strike three, then, was for
Ivy: Chunky of body, sharp of tongue and as Mom must suspect
unnatural in desire. With Harper beside her, Ivy knew that she
could not be who her mother wanted. She probably couldn't be
who Harper wanted either, but she did want Harper. So screw
Mom and screw the flaming Tower card and screw me too, for being too
chicken-shit to ask for what I need.
Madame tapped her foot and said, “Come now, you vantto ask about a boy, yes?”
Ivy tugged at the stupid strangling scarf. Whose idea of
fun was this? Where had Harper bought the damn cards? Scratchthat – why had Harper given her the cards? No. Not that either.
The honest truth? The question she really wanted to ask . . .
Could Harper ever feel the same way? Did she ever find it hardto sleep at night, just because of Ivy? But these were not the kindof questions Harper wanted; for all her flirtations with the dark
and dangerous, Harper remained a conventional Southern girl.
"Ask." She now insisted of Ivy.
“Where'd you buy the cards?”“Little Five Points,” Harper flashed her super-white
teeth. “I already told you that.”“I don’t think so. I would have remembered.”
They'd found the funky neighborhood together, during along, slow run one afternoon in the fall. The location andatmosphere were as far away from Westmont Academy andAtlanta's moneyed Buckhead neighborhood as Ivy could have
hoped to go: Long-haired guys kicked around a bean bag in a
rubble-strewn front yard; rainbow flags hung from bedroom
windows; a girl with a black-faced guitar sat on the hood of apick-up and strummed chords. No one watched as they jogged
past. Later, they talked about venturing back one weekend; they
could shop at some of the strange stores, maybe grab lunch atthat place. Eat Your Vegetables. Ivy loved the name; she loved to bebossed when it came to food. And love. But now it seemed,
Harper had returned to L5P alone. Or at least, without Ivy. She
stared at Harper, willing her to confess. A sense of doom stirredin her gut. The Tower cried out cataclysm, cataclysm. She pulled

66 • Sinister Wisdom 86 – Ignite!

her feet out from under her butt. Pins and needles in her toes.
Harper owed her a confession. Ivy flexed her heels and asked
again. “Where exactly did you get them?”
Madame dealt nine cards, face down, in a circle—the
Motherpeace spread, the one described in the instruction booklet—then looked up at Ivy defiantly. “All right. I went back there lastmonth.”“By yourself?”“I wanted to get you a present. I thought I could findsomething. Kind of quirky. Like you. So yes, I went back alone.”
Harper was lying. Her tell was the way she tossed herhair between each choppy sentence. She dealt three final cards,
face down beneath the circle; they would reveal proximate,
distant and final outcomes.
“How’d you get there?”“Is this a fucking federal investigation?”
Ivy waited her out.
“Dan drove me, okay. Is that what you want to hear?”
Ivy's neck burned, blood rising up her cheeks. Dan. Dan
Lauderdale: Class President Yearbook Editor Christian Life
Leader Wrestling Co-Captain. Lately, he had been tagging alongwith the girls’ cross-country team because he said it would help
him make his competition weight. 154 lbs. He spit every few
yards, trying to shed those extra ounces. She was such an idiot tobelieve the runs were part of his regimen; she could spit on herself
for stupidity. Did Harper have to rub the final three cards in her
face for her to finally understand. Dan. Harper. Little Five Points?
“Now ask the goddamn question for the reading.”
Harper was not fooling around.
Ivy was lousy at finding one. It was a skill, just like tying ascarf or smoking that required a measure of femininity
unattainable to her. Some people -- Mom, Harper -- never had toworry about such things. They just could: Wear a scarf, inhale,know the right questions.
“Ask,” Harper said, “or I am so out of here.”
Like that she could lose her. Ivy untied the scarf from her
throat, and scratched at her neck with stubby, bitten fingernails.
Harper had climbed in Dan's car voluntarily and given him
directions to Little Five Points. Did she lead him into theSummer 2012 • 67

restaurant, Eat Your Vegetables, whisper that command into his ear,rest her hand on his thigh? Did she buy the Tarot just to tantalize
straight-laced Dan? How excited he must have been, walking
through the odd community with a gorgeous girl, just crazyenough to explore the dark arts.
A gust of wind blew hair across Harper's face and she
pushed it back impatiently as she began to gather up cards fromthe steps. The trees held tight to their leaves, but winter wascoming. Ivy saw what she was not yet ready to lose; knew what
would have to be enough. For now. Maybe for the next few years.
She cleared her throat and found somewhere deep within exactly
the type of question that Madame wanted to answer.

68 • Sinister Wisdom 86 – Ignite!

Beauty School
Lisa Dordal
We never knew, on Tuesdays, what she’d look like.
Our mother, who drove to the Del Mar College of Hair Design
to get dolled up cheap by a stranger. Someone she’d never seen
beforemassaging soapy fingers into her wet scalp. Afterwards
rolling one taut section after another around a metal curler
to form large, loopy curls, like the links in those paper chains
we made in Sunday school. Or small, tight ringlets
tucked in like something sleeping that didn’t want to be
disturbed. The color, too, varied: from Hepburn-chestnut one
week
to a sassy blonde, the next – so blonde, truckers on the Dan Ryan
would slow down to get a glimpse of the pretty young thing
in the blue Karmann Ghia. Until they saw the years in her face.
One week it came out wrong. “Aubergine” the school called it.
But she wore it anyway. Proud to trigger the stir
she was never supposed to make or be.

Summer 2012 • 69

Recycling
Lisa Dordal
Rinsing a jar, I think of my mother; of her own hands
rinsing the remnants of pickles and jellies.
And of the select few: the jars she washed,
re-used. Some for plant cuttings –a sprig of begonia growing fine, wispy roots,or the punctured pit of an avocado, left to sprout
over water. A few she lined inside with a layerof dried beans, for hiding valuables (money or jewelry).
Others, she filled with bourbon. I was sixteen
when I found them; still have my notes,
the sheet of lined yellow paper on which I recorded
my findings: four in her sitting room,
behind a collector’s set of Hardy Boys mysteries
and, where my search unwittingly began, a neatly ordered
run of Scientific Americans. Three smaller onesin her dresser amidst an assortment of cold crèmes
and sweet perfumes. The largest in her nightstand,stashed between a stack of New York Times best-sellers
and a bookmarked copy of Good News for Modern Man.
These notes, tucked, for years, from view.
Like the poems I had written about the truth
hidden within my own body, my own text of flesh
and desire which could not be trusted. Already,I had learned how to gather and record
what I wasn’t yet allowed to speak. The jars
she didn’t use, she’d put in a box under
the kitchen sink until the third Saturday of the month,when she’d load it into the back of our Chevrolet,
drive to the recycling center and begin (again) –this time by color – the process of separating.

70 • Sinister Wisdom 86 – Ignite!

Intersection
Lisa Dordal
Their freezer had died. The melted blood of raw,
damp meat everywhere on the kitchen floor.
Bright and contagious across flat brown tiles.
My father, ten time-zones away, studying
the ancient gods of ancient Greece. My mother and I
stopped at a light two blocks from Sears. It was there
I dug into layers of built-up wondering, let form in my mouth
one bated word after another, to utter fully the question –Have you ever thought you might be –that hung in the cramped space between us –a lesbian? (Father’s first words:
Maybe your Mother is, too, when I came out).
It wasn’t an option, she said.
Her head never turning, both of us looking straight
into the lucid circle of red that, in that moment,
provided all the direction we cared for.
What more could we say
about a revelation carrying the whole sinewy weightof non-being. The thousands of ways she’d said no –deferred, followed and agreed –making herself smaller and smaller, a god of old clay,
buried and powerless. But for the tiny partthat broke out, sneaked out sly: The resounding Yesof her seventh conception; as if I birthed her.

Summer 2012 • 71

If I Had to be a Flower
Betsy Brown
I have my own kind of thorniness,but if I had to be a flower,
I would not be a rose.
I would rather not be any kind of flower.
Oh how I dread being dainty or delicate.
Oh how I disdain the thoughtof being some fragile decorative thing.
I might be poison oak.
If you mess with me, you won't forget me.
I might be some lush tangled bramble,
inch by inchtaking over a vacant lot.
Or maybe I'm a climbing vine,
crawling up the cottonwood tree
on my way to strangling the telephone wire.
But if I had to be a flower,of course I'd be a dandelion,
with bitter nutritious leaves,
my intoxicating golden blossoms,
ripening into bits of silver fluff,
before finally floating away
like a flock of tiny angels,on the next strong breeze.
I would be a stubborn plant,
impossible to eradicate,
asserting my brilliant beauty,
while everyone around me
scorned me as a weed.

72 • Sinister Wisdom 86 – Ignite!

Ensorcellment
Aisha Sidibe
We met in high school. I knew she hated me; I overcamethat with a long phone call. I told her I became her best friend
from the moment I saw her on the bleachers; odd, ugly, beautiful,humble, and magnificent. Her dark cloud of hair was tied up thatday. Her eyes a dark pool, shifted slowly from person to person.
She had her circle of friends and they all demanded her attention.
Now I sit with her under the shadows I promise myself I
will never forget as she tells me “I want a kiss.” Her words are
fierce without action, as if the verbal expression is action enough.
Enough movement, when it is not. She can foreshadow its deaththrough the lack of physicality.
I know her, better than my own wants. On our way to this bench
cast high in solitude, we spoke of the wrongs. This is ourconnection, our reality. Our progressive ascension on the steps
leading here is hard like the steel we have walked on. We are by
the water, some port a previous boyfriend brought her to.
A couple months ago, her uncle – the man who shared
her sort of mind, he reminded her to laugh – died. Her tears were
not real, her pain was a bad movie that tied me down to abottomless ocean and would not free me. Her petite body
shivered under my own and I knew I could save her with thetruth. Things surely die. Cast away into the place of nothingness,and spirituality. Where the divine and the evil reside inside thesame hosts; our minds. Her numbness begged this of me then and
I responded as the EMT began having difficulties getting theburly black bag from the elevator. They drop the corpse onto thefloor. The ocean does have a bottom and so does the depths ofhell.
Now I turn to look at her and ask “Is that so?”- Myverbal declaration of reality. My blood signature to her
contracted words. She made the rules. Always has.
In High School we functioned as one and I could say she neverleft my side but it is I who never left hers. Her free spirit andstupidity deeply marked me. I could not laugh without her. I
could not feel pain without her.

Summer 2012 • 73

I know this, so I surely must not feel passion without her.
My parents taught me all things that feel good are the works ofthe devil but this did not feel good, much like the fall of death.
I get up from the bench and squat before her, casting ashadow on the left side of her dark face. I don’t know my intent; I
only know my motivation – a shift between numbness andfeeling. She shakes her head as I reach towards her, I feed into
my excitement.
People always asked if we were sisters, not because of ourlooks because in fact we looked nothing alike, I was in fact plump,and sharply ugly, but in our mannerisms. One day she told one ofthem “Yes, we are actually identical twins” to which the person
responded with sage-like looks as if they knew all along. Ourstories and lives were in their hands and there could be no
moment where it would be escaped. But in fact it was a lie.
I am taking my hand and cupping her face. I look deeply
into her eyes. Using my thumb, I trace the path of the moon lightwhich has illuminated the soft angles of her face, because she
could not follow me there. Only I had this power, to see her, toview her and to hold her eternity. I could not say I had her in myheart, because it did not exist. I was safe within my thoughts solong as I was not I, but these fleshly desires. I say “You broughtme here, I adore you.” She responds with a smirk. I feel that she
has accomplished something in making me react in a place likethis. A place shown to her by someone who loves her. They
brought her here in warmth and she brings me here in the cold.
I let my hands fall. I do not need their guidance. My will alone isenough to envelop her within me. I allow my lips to touch hers.
SoftlyGraduating from high school, we knew we could not takethe world by a storm, one which no one could identify. So she fellin love with a narcissist. It is true that a narcissist is the only one
not plagued by a fellow lover of self. This boy spoke in tongues
not spiritually but in a way I found truly to be mad. Pompous; thereveling in one’s own brain can cause madness – not ingenuity –but the sad reality of the universe and that of an unknown void. I
loved her then. Love; apparent in my distance and herpossessiveness. She had broken up with the narcissist and came

74 • Sinister Wisdom 86 – Ignite!

back to me. Her eyes telling me that we were fine in the perpetual“now” moments.
She is now wielding under the palpitating heart of mymouth. Open and flooded with things I am sure I am nevermeant to see. Her love was given back to me, but not in a place
where we were free. Bound by the gender associations and sexual
allocations, I could not win.
The truth is my words are not my own, and I do not own
my actions. I wish to torment. To set the fire under the desires of
those who mirror my wants. I feed into the poetry of the moment
and I stream these thoughts.
We are tragedy. We are where the bottomless oceans that must
be proved.
And maybe it is crazy, and maybe it is madness. The need tohang on and to be enveloped always.
And the pulling back and the bringing in and the burn.
And in the lighting and in the clothing
and in the voice of the eyes and in the vision of words.
In poetry.
In the slip of the foot, and the perfection of a dance
In the crook of a nose and the noose
Of uncertainty.
Either way it is madness, red passionate insanity.
Sweaty palms and twitching fingers
In the moment that I am satisfied.
In the proximity of a muse.
The madness.
The lines of air, the movement of thoughts.
The internal cave lit with the illumination of eyes
A kiss.
Caressing of a fine line of hair above two sheer windows.
The curve of a maze. The cusp of my wine.
I overflow. In the proximity of my muse.
In the need to be enveloped perpetually.
In the gain and in the loss.
In the over thought and in the under stood.
It is in this kiss.
She says “Ibid.”Summer 2012 • 75

Translating the moment to its end. There are no emotional
repetitions in life.
Tomorrow she falls in love with someone she can never share herbeing with. The place where she can hide from her thespian art;
her life. I am in want and in need but it was always too late.

76 • Sinister Wisdom 86 – Ignite!

Questing Spirit
Martha Yoak
Blue heron hunches dark
Bowed like a cowled monk.
In quietude immersed
It meditates deeply a
Shallow fish
Marks time with primeval beakFielding water what holy seek.

Summer 2012 • 77

Winter Labyrinth
Martha Yoak
The labyrinth loved my feet,it seemed some vague yieldforeign like breath of myfirst kiss.
I knew this journey, my last,
would be the hardest.
I had always walked in circles
longing intersection.
Although I had beauty and wit
I should have had all of it,
but when I tried, beat love backbox her in she always got me
her ring and laid me flat.
I took all the hits and all the quits
then myself prized aLancelot in full sprint
blazing through the hyacinths.

78 • Sinister Wisdom 86 – Ignite!

Longing
Kate Yarrow
It was night, the streets bright with neon. I pushed open
the door and walked into the dimmed lights, red walls, the longbar. You remember the Duchess. It’s gone now of course, butthere are plenty like it. Twenty women swiveled on their stools towatch me as I breezed by, down the length of the room, checking
them out in return. Past more women leaning against the walltalking and laughing, one catching my glance and raising aneyebrow at me as I passed, all the way back to the tiny dance
floor with little tables around the edges.
I stopped and looked around. I was longing for
excitement, love and romance that night. A new lover or a onenight stand. I would have preferred the lover, but I wouldn’t haveminded the other; I hadn’t had any kind of loving for too long. I
needed my quota of kisses and smiles, caresses and sweet talk in
the night. A woman.
And women there were. All kinds of women—short, tall,thin, fat, dark and fair. Butch and femme and in between. Young
women bursting with energy, in jeans and tight shirts, with long
hair or hair cut to the bone, jumping up and down on the dance
floor, flushed with excitement. Chrysalis, the miracle of birth:brand new lesbians bursting out of themselves like butterflies into
bloom, leaving their cocoons behind. And women in their thirties
and forties, political women in serious clothes and somber faces,
career women in slacks and jackets, blazer dykes. Older womenwith silver hair, full bodies, lined faces and wise eyes. All sizes,
shapes, colors, types—women!
The place was full. On the dance floor, couples moved
slowly to the music. Nice. So nice. Just being there made me feelless lonely. It was a good place to be. No empty seats, but I founda spot against the wall, where I leaned, watched, and waited.
Some of the pairs dancing looked like they’d just met,some looked like new couples, and some like they’d been together
a long time. I loved watching the ones who were obviously new,just a couple of weeks or months old. They were so into eachother. It was delicious watching a woman’s hand stroke its waySummer 2012 • 79

down her lover’s back, past her waist, coming to rest gently on asoftly swelling cheek. Delicious how the woman being touchedwould move even closer, murmuring, maybe grinding a little.
And then there would be the occasional stimulating pair who
would grind more than a little, almost making love right before
my eyes.
Surrounded by all this, my body reacted, feeling both
hungry and nourished at the same time. I wanted all of it—the
sensuality, the intense eye contact, the dancing. “Your eyes arebigger than your stomach,” my grandmother used to say. I’m still
the same.
I remember when I was a new lesbian, and the first time I
saw women dancing together. I was very excited, of course, but I
was also in shock. Even though I’d been dreaming about it for solong, the reality was almost too much to bear. Women actually
touching each other, in each other’s arms. I couldn’t believe it.
Many I would never have guessed to be lesbians. And all acting
as though it was perfectly ordinary and commonplace. I had totake it in for a long time before it seemed in any way ordinary tome.
The song ended, but some women kept right on dancing
to their own music. One couple barely moved, swaying in theaftermath, their lips and bodies glued together. Others moved off
the floor together, and a few pairs separated and walked away bythemselves. Now it was a little easier to see who was alone.
Anybody I liked? Then, across the room, I saw a very young
woman staring directly at me.
I recognized her. I didn’t know her name, but she was a
waitress at a restaurant I ate at sometimes across town. I liked
seeing her when I went there. I’d also seen her at demonstrations
and other events. I’d noticed that whenever we saw each other,
we’d exchange a look, though nothing ever happened, and I’dforget about her until the next time. Now here she was again.
I looked back at her, a smile curling up the corners of mymouth. I have an angular face with large features, including awide mouth, and a space between my front teeth—the mark ofsensuality, so I’m told. I’m also told I have a nice smile. I hoped
she thought so.

80 • Sinister Wisdom 86 – Ignite!

She definitely interested me. Short, but broad and solid(unlike me—I’m tall and thin), she had a very large chest. A niceface with round cheeks, a strong chin, brown eyes and a faircomplexion. She looked sweet, but definitely not demure, more
direct. Soft and strong: that’s my type. She wore a big white shirt
tucked into tight black pants, a nice contrast. She was very young,maybe 20 or 21. I was in my thirties, an older woman.
A slow song came on. And she walked straight across thefloor to me.
Feeling suddenly shy as well as excited and pleased, I
watched her come. She moved in such a forthright, no nonsenseway, she made me think of a tree, with its strong trunk and roots.
I watched her breasts move under her shirt as she walked. She
stopped in front of me.
“Hi,” she said, looking into my eyes and smiling. “I’m
Erica.” She reached out her hand. “Would you like to dance?”
There was no question about it, she was affecting me. I
took her hand, told her my name, and we moved an inch or twoout from the wall to dance.
The first time I ever hold a woman, there are some things
I notice immediately. Certain things I need in women I sleep
with, whether they’re one-time or long-time lovers. A very
primary one has to do with my sense of smell.
I need a woman to smell really good. I have to want tobreathe her in, skin and hair, above and below, inside and out. It
may be that her own natural smell just happens to be sweet, orthat she wears a scent I like, or even uses a particular kind of
soap. I was once totally infatuated with someone mainly because
her shirts smelled so good. As for me, I have often favored
wearing patchouli oil, to the point where my friends sometimes
call me Patchouli Mama. Erica smelled a little like cinnamon andcloves: sweet with a bite. Like freshly baked spice cake. I loved it.
Another thing I noticed at once: her skin was warmer
than mine. Heat seemed to emanate from her hands touchingme, and through her shirt to my hands on her. I wondered whatthat was about. Did she always have a higher than normal bodytemperature? Or did it happen when she was turned on, and was
she really turned on by me? I fantasized that she was anenormously sensual woman, and that caused the heat.

Summer 2012 • 81

I felt her weight and substance against me. Her heavy
breasts brushed me as we danced, and I could feel her hardnipples. Our bodies, such different sizes, fit together like a jigsaw
puzzle, the top of her head just reaching my cheek, her shoulders
fitting perfectly just above my breasts. My cheeks were burning.
Felt good, looked good, smelled good—closing my eyes, I inhaleddeeply, and thought, I’m done for. Wherever this goes from here,
I’m along for the ride.
Rituals. The ritual of the dance, the ritual of meeting, ofmating. We moved slowly to the music and at first didn’t talk atall. It’s so strange, just meeting someone, and then immediately
being involved in intimate activity with her. Beginnings are like
that, of course, but they’re made easier by the invisible, delicate
silken web that weaves the two of you together from the moment
the approach is made and accepted, eyes smiling into eyes, andyou both realize that chances are, sooner or later you’re going to
be gazing at each other in bed. In this case, given her sweet smell
and the way our bodies fit so cleverly together, I hoped it would
be very soon.
We did not step on each other’s feet. Because I was muchtaller, her arms were around my waist while mine rested loosely
on her shoulders. I thought I should probably find something tosay.
“Mmmm—you work at Angelica’s, right? I’m sure I’ve
seen you there.” I remembered that she wore big white shirts likethis at work too. I’d noticed her breasts moving inside them
before this.
She tipped her head back and looked at me. “I sure do,”she answered, smiling brilliantly. “I know I’ve seen you there.”
Barely begun, the conversation stopped short, while charges andcurrents flashed between us. The circuits had been ready andwaiting. Now they lit up humming like the neon lights of the sign
outside the Duchess. Sparks coursed through me. My knees felt
weak—a sure sign.
When the charge died down a little, the conversation
started again, but progressed only with difficulty. It would justhave begun, when I’d notice her watching my lips as they shaped
the words I was saying. Or I would let my hands slide off her
shoulders and down her arms, or my cheek turn slightly to rest

82 • Sinister Wisdom 86 – Ignite!

against her sweet-smelling hair. Or we’d step back a little to gazeat each other, and then she’d pull me in a tiny bit closer, and theshape and heat of her breasts would imprint themselves bythermal transfer onto me. Once she raised her face all the way up
and actually touched her lips, ever so softly, to my cheek. With
each little shift, little movement, our words would stop as wavesof heat spread through our bodies, flushed our cheeks, andmoved down between our legs, where the pulsing, not to be stilleduntil much, much later, had already begun.
Somehow we did manage to talk a little, learn a bit about
each other. People we knew in common, where we lived, what we
did for work. I was more than ten years older. We’d both grown
up in New York. We both wrote poetry, we’d both been intherapy. We heard these things, we took them in, even thoughmost of our awareness was centered in our humming senses, inthe totally engrossing experience of touching, holding, inhaling,absorbing, looking at each other.
The song came to an end. We stopped dancing, dropping
our arms reluctantly, neither of us saying anything. What
happens now, I wondered. This will, it must continue—how
could it not? Then the music started again, our eyes met, and ourbodies came together as naturally as if we’d been lovers before
tonight. As if we’d been lovers for a long time. As if we weregoing to be lovers. We were going to be lovers. Erica, I thought. I
can’t wait to touch you all over. Come home with me, now.
We danced through many more songs. Some of them
fast, moving to the beat a foot apart, moving our bodies for eachother. Checking each other out. Liking what we saw. Me, loving
her contradictions: big breasts and big thighs; narrow hips andflat belly. Liking it all. Her smile, her eyes, her heat. Liking herlooking at me, drinking me in.
When the music was slow, moving back into each other’sarms. Feeling more familiar each time, feeling my body loosen,
open to her. Letting go of any awkwardness with her, of all selfconsciousness, knowing she was letting go of those things too.
Being brazenly, sensuously connected. Taking each other in, andin, and in.
A fast dance ended; we stopped to catch our breaths.
Erica’s friends were leaving. She went to tell them goodnight, as I

Summer 2012 • 83

watched from across the room, glad I didn’t have to meet themthen. I was trembling, my teeth almost chattering, my whole bodyaching with longing. I was in no shape to relate. She wasn’t
either, and she just hugged them, turned around and came backto me.
Then, for the first time, we kissed. And to all the otherwatchers, we became that couple I’d watched earlier: just barely
swaying to the music, limbs and lips locked together, nearlymaking love right there.
I soared. She was purely and simply erotic. With every
bit of myself, I reached out for her. I wrapped my arms aroundher, pressed my mouth to hers, and allowed my tongue to touch
her lips, learn their shape and texture, caress them. I ran it along
the crevice between her upper lip and her teeth, an area I find soerogenous I can barely stand being touched there.
She was quivering. I gathered her to me more tightly.
Our bodies pulsed madly. I bit her lips gently, sucked on her
tongue. My muscles ached with the tension of holding her tight,
but not as tight as I wanted to, of holding myself back, keeping
myself reined in.
It was definitely time for us to leave. I pulled back andgazed at her, smiling. She was breathing hard. She saw my smileand joined me in it.
I put my arm around her waist, and she reciprocated. We
left the dance floor without a glance at our audience—I’m surethere were many of them—and walked past the long bar, with all
the women sitting at it watching us, to the door.
Outside the Duchess, the air was very crisp. I realized I
was perspiring when the cool air touched my moist clothing. I
started shivering, and pulled Erica close to me, sure she must becold too.
It was only three blocks from the Duchess to myapartment. We started off walking slowly, engrossed in each otherand dazed by our physical sensations, but soon found ourselves
going faster and faster, until we dropped our arms, grasped
hands, and ran laughing the rest of the way to my house and in
the door.

84 • Sinister Wisdom 86 – Ignite!

At last, we were there. As we entered the apartment, I
wondered if we would feel strange or self-conscious again, but wedidn’t. All that had been left behind what seemed like hours ago.
We walked through the living room together. I thought
about those words: living room. Room I live in, that would start
to show her who I am. I was glad to have her in it. It was full ofme, all the things I liked and that were a part of my life.
Interesting and beautiful objects, textures, pictures, books, plants,
bits of nature—music, comfort, colors—two sleepy cats. She took
it all in.
We reached the kitchen. “Are you hungry?” I asked her,
the good hostess. “Want something to eat?” She grinned at me. “I
won’t give you the obvious answer,” she said. I grinned back,relishing her. We passed the kitchen by.
My bedroom. My bed. On it.
Our clothing. First that shirt of hers. Unbuttoning it. Her
breasts were as beautiful as I’d imagined and felt through theshirt, but her nipples were amazing, creating a shock in me thatreached the tips of my own breasts and down between my legs.
Very large, intensely pink areolas, as soft as rose petals, covered
their tips, ending in perfectly round nipples that were totallyerect.
Struck by her beauty, just staring, I felt my longing as a
palpable thing. Having gathered itself for so long, it was ready toleap, like a big cat in the jungle. It had shape and weight and fire
and muscle, it was separate from me and it was me. And it, I,
wanted to leap but didn’t. I chose to wait, to savor. To touch, butvery lightly. To hypnotize her, and me, as the cobra does,
undulating before its prey. I could hear the flute music playing.
She was transfixed. She was so still. I would draw her
into me, as fire draws air. I would touch my finger to her mouth,
trace her lips. I would brush the backs of my fingers softly overher breasts, like feathers, like whispers. I would whisper in her
ear. Or I would take off more of her clothes, see how she looked,
such a small, barely rounded belly below such big breasts. I
would unzip her pants to see, to touch, but leave her shirt on,
open but on, framing her, while her breasts hung free.
But I couldn’t stand it, I couldn’t wait. I would lay us
both down and wrap myself around her, or put her on top of me,Summer 2012 • 85

I would touch her, kiss her, tongue her, I wanted everything. I
wanted to drink everything in, I would begin at once, quickly,
now—but no, I wanted to slow down, go slowly, to wait, to havethis moment last forever—oh which, which to do, what to do,
how could I do it all?
But she took the decision from me. She moved. She
decided, reaching out and pulling my head down to her.
I am like plywood, made of many layers, each a part ofand strengthening the others. I need all my layers to be whole,
heart and guts and body, hunger and longing, generosity andselfishness, flesh and spirit, human and animal and more.
Erica opened all of me. All the doors between the
different parts of myself flew open, and my layers mixed, all withall. Our bodies joined, floated, crested, we were two fish, two
starfish, two stars.
I buried my face in her, and she smelled of the sun.

86 • Sinister Wisdom 86 – Ignite!

Siren
Susan DiPronio‘Cuttlefish belong to the cephalopod family. They have thehighest intelligence of any invertebrate, eyes in the back of their head; use jet
propulsion to get away from predators.’a beach stretches far to touch the ocean
a mute clam spits tiny bubbles up from under the wet sandlike a signal fire of sorts calling for rescue‘Cuttlefish have three hearts because their blood needs to pump really fast.
They are fleshy on the outside with an internal shell.’
you are a cuttlefish, a mollusk
soft, edible on the outside, invisible at will,with an internal shell to protect your heart‘They can make themselves unseen in an instant, becoming one with the ocean
floor and can reflect light in all sorts of colors, appearing to glow.’chameleon of the sea, a changeling,from daughter to mother on land
primarily a deep water inhabitantfavorite food of dolphinsI, a common clam, shut tight upon your attempted visit to myspace
burrowing deep at the edge of the sea
another tide recedes
extinguishing evidence of my existenceSummer 2012 • 87

October 13th
Susan DiPronio
Jazz baby
you better hurry up and get here
your moma is tipping to the rightpulling to the leftanxious as to the when
already knows the whatjazz baby
pounding your feetthumping your fist to the beating music
Esperanza's deepness lulls a music rhyme
Sonia kissed you
so it's poetry will bless you

88 • Sinister Wisdom 86 – Ignite!

Collards for Sale
Susan DiPronio and Alison Gerig

Words and Design: Susan DiPronio
Photograph: Alison GerigSummer 2012 • 89

Hair
Sarah Brooks
You often talked disparagingly about “those lesbians,”
the women slightly overweight with the short spiked hair and thereminiscences about high school softball games in which they had
hit winning homeruns or whatever it is people do well in softball.
You would talk about those women while we walked beside eachother on the boardwalk along the ocean in our town; we rarely
touched; you never felt ready for the world to see us as a couple,
though you claimed the problem was that you just did not “do”
public displays of affection. A few years ago, though, the moment
we disembarked from the plane that had carried us from our
town to San Francisco, you clasped my hand in yours and evenpulled me to you at baggage claim and kissed me on the lips,
which made me wonder if an openly gay town was exempt inyour complicated book of rules.
But I am talking about “those lesbians.” You would talkabout them as we walked along the boardwalk because that iswhere the enormous cruise ships dock, and inevitably those
thousands of tourists contain some lesbians – “butch” lesbians,
you would call them, and I would hear the fear that crept into
your voice. “I used to play basketball with those women; that’s
why it took me so long to figure this out.” “This”: youreuphemistic word for coming out, which you really hadn’t done
and didn’t do, because now that you’re dead, you can’t. “This”:
the word that made your voice lower, because even before you
became psychotic, you were suspicious of the world. You didn’t
want to be found out.
Why did they offend you so much, the pear-shaped
women in their comfortable Merrell tennis shoes, their graying
hair spiked and highlighted? Cameras hung around their necks;
they were the most likely to wear sweatshirts advertising thecruise ships’ port of call. They seemed friendly, most of them. I
wanted to follow them onto the hulking ships, sit down besidethem at a bar, gaze out the round windows at the darkening sky
and ask, How did you get to this place, this utterly open place? I wanted
to cut my hair.

90 • Sinister Wisdom 86 – Ignite!

Once, I told you I thought I might shave my head, andyou told me flatly that you would leave me if I did. Leave me.
Little did we know that three years later, you would go insane
and become so frighteningly inconsistent in your moods and yourintentions that I would leave you in the middle of the night
clutching my child and my pillowcase. We had an argument
about that, the evening you said it. You would leave me because I
shaved my head? What if I got cancer? Oh, you said, that would be
different, because it wouldn’t be your choice. As if the mostheinous act I could commit would be to choose to look like one of“those lesbians”. It might look sexy, I argued. You didn’t want totalk about it anymore. It was if I had offended you. Just don’t doit, you said.
Stupidly, I never did. I kept my hair long, its brownwaves hanging just below my small pink nipples when I stood
naked before you in our bedroom, before you started insisting inyour self-hatred that we never see each other naked; you turned
off the lights before you went into the bathroom to shower andthen you sprinted from shower to bed. You were that ashamed ofyour body, which I always loved, to the end. And because youwere ashamed of yourself, you could not bring yourself to look at
me. Me, who you had once studied like a painter studies his
model. My long hair seductively hiding my breasts, and here is
my smooth curved side and my flat belly with its surprise of asilver ring in the navel, and the hair you once loved to explore theway we used to love to wander new trails in the woods together
until you started complaining of weariness and pain in yourknees.
I could have cut my hair in our last year together andyou would have never noticed. You had gotten lost by theninside yourself; I imagined reaching into your empty eyes andpulling you back to the surface; I imagined the rope I would
weave out of my shorn hair to haul you back up to yourself.
Yelling at you hadn’t worked; neither had silence; neither hadsex. I went to a salon and had fifteen inches cut off my hair, andreturned home. You brightened, briefly, our daughters beaming
beside you: It’s beautiful, you said. You look free. I was.

Summer 2012 • 91

How can I forgive myself for what I actually cut off?
Somewhere in our ocean-side town, the fifteen-inch braid of myhair packaged to be mailed to Locks-of-Love; somewhere you,staring emptily, your heart beating irregularly maybe because it
was bleeding from the rent I had left when I yanked my own
heart away. You said once you would leave me if I ever shaved
my head, but you never imagined I would leave you. No one
ever had.
When you died, I stood for several hours and consideredleaping off a cliff. It seemed more certain than a drug overdoseor a train “accident” with my car. But eventually, I edged awayfrom the cliff and drove home the twenty miles to pick up mychild from my mother’s care, and then I just held myself andsobbed angry hot tears that this ended when and how it did.
Then, silent and spent, I considered a pair of scissors. From
Sherman Alexie, I had learned that some Native American tribes
abide by the tradition of shearing off one’s long and sacred hair atthe death of someone beloved. It seemed appropriate. I held myponytail in one hand and the scissors aloft in the other. But I
could only hear your ridiculous threat: I’ll leave you if you shave yourhead; I am desperate for you to haunt me; maybe the answer is tonever cut my hair again. So I haven’t. And you haven’t comeyet.
If you had seen me step off a cruise ship, if you hadn’t
known me, you wouldn’t have called me one of “those lesbians”.
My hair hangs in a single thick braid to the middle of my back.
But maybe, if you had been able to swallow your fear for a
moment, you would have looked into my eyes and seen yourself,
and maybe you wouldn’t have died, and maybe that would havebeen our first meeting. But it wasn’t. My hair grows longer, andit matters not at all.
My hair grows longer, and I say, despairing, I’m going toshave my head, and from the back seat, my 5-year-old daughter,
adopted from Ethiopia, says, “No! If you do, I’ll go back to
Africa!” and I start laughing, hysterically, because it will never be
for my hair or lack of hair that anyone leaves me in this world. I
know that, now.

92 • Sinister Wisdom 86 – Ignite!

Summer 2012 • 93

Book Reviews
Noctilucent by Melissa Buckheit (Bristol, UK:
Shearsman Books, 2012).
Reviewed by Grace Sikorski
Melissa Buckheit is an accomplished poet, photographer,
professor, choreographer, aerial trapeziest, and translator (fromModern Greek to English, and from English to French). She
earned her M.F.A. in Poetry from Naropa University. Her work
has appeared in Sinister Wisdom, among other publications. She
has received accolades for her poetry, including the American
Poets Honorary Award and favorable recognition as a finalist for
the Backwaters Press First Book Prize. Buckheit’s chapbook, Arc,
published in 2007 by The Drunken Boat, was received very
favorably.
The title of Melissa Buckheit’s most recent book of
poetry, Noctilucent, refers to the phenomenon of light emerging
from darkness. The mood such an image evokes is sustained
throughout the 23 poems in the volume. In each poem, complex
impressions emerge from flashes of sensory detail and allusions tonatural, cultural, and interpersonal events, and build uponthemselves to accumulate meaning. The book is a thoughtful
meditation on the power of words, as in translation, poetry, orordinary spoken language, and the complex realities they
mediate. We are asked to recognize the beauty in profoundmoments of suffering, mundane moments such as riding themetro, and the most self-revelatory moments of meditation, sleep,birth, and sensual union with the beloved.
In the title poem, “Noctilucent,” the poet explores theway the mind can find meaning through a chain of loose
association. We begin with the Greek word “kyanos,” which istranslated strictly as “cyano / blue,” and then the color isassociated with its material origins, “certain bluish salts andminerals,” then with the chemical compound “cyanide,” andthen the peculiar effect of its lethal poison, “the blueness of skin.”
The reader moves to “the blueness of sky” whose color isassociated with “water / breathed in” and the speaker’s own

94 • Sinister Wisdom 86 – Ignite!

condition of “cyanosis,” by which her “skin appears / blue fromno oxygen in the blood.” This stark image of the lack of what isneeded for life leaps then, in the second stanza, to a contrasting
image of blue light that is “alive with the kindling of moths,” bugs
glowing with “bioluminescence,” which is in some way “likelove.” The third stanza invites us to imagine “moon lanterns,”
illuminating “the night-/ walk to a lover’s door,” the “electric
blue / lights of the city,” and the way that city looks from space“illuminated by noctilucent clouds, waves, beaches / and celestial orbs” Theclosing image is most poignant: “dark (the homes) we makeglowing in / other bodies / our lovers / asleep (inside us).” Our
minds move among these associations until the color blue, andlight-like love-homes, takes on a multifaceted and layered
significance, a gesture only the free verse of the poem can sustain.
The poet’s curiosity about the power of language isevident in many of the poems. In “Suffering,” mother rejects
child saying, “you’re not my daughter anymore and you’ll neverbe / my son.” In “Hildegard,” the mystic’s words become the”secret salve of a sister’s voice.” The sensual immediacy of the
poetic voice is always heard on every page, but never moreclearly than in “Post-Modern Epithalamion,” when poetry itself
speaks: “I’m secret, spoken against your ear / not a dream orlament, / but poetry. Put your tongue against mine. This / is nota vow, but what is the secret / of love? It’s alive.”
Buckheit avoids clichéd expressions of the “chemistry” ofpassion, but explores personal experiences through the lens ofscientific observation, as in “Suffering,” when “The woman ischemically altering from the moment she is ignited.” We areconstantly reminded that as one element among many, ourexperiences might be illuminated by what we observe in thenatural world, which is populated by other animal species (thehoneybee, salmon, starfish, and squid) and a wide array of flora
as well. It is a complex universe Buckheit explores at many levels
from the macroscopic and celestial spheres down to thesubmarine, microscopic, and even the subatomic levels.
Burkheit’s poetry challenges the reader in many ways,
and occasionally the reader may encounter a word or phrase that
requires some definition, but the poet has anticipated this need.
Notes at the back of the book offer translation of Greek and Latin

Summer 2012 • 95

words, identification of geographical locations, and definition ofterms from history, literature, music, botany, astronomy, physics,
and chemistry. These notes enhance our reading of the poems
and further emphasize the poet’s eclectic interests.
Noctilucent is a beautiful collection of poems,
demonstrating the poet’s impressive range.
Memoirs of an Old Dyke, Jinx Beers, iUniverse, New
York, 2008
Reviewed by Jean Taylor
I bought three books while I was in the US in 2010: Alix
Dobkin’s My Red Blood at her reading at the June L Mazer
Lesbian Archives in LA in June, The Other Side of Paradise: A Memoir
by Staceyann Chin at the Michigan Women’s Music Festival inAugust and Memoirs of an Old Dyke by Jinx Beers who dedicatedher book and all proceeds from its sale to the Mazer.
I bought Jinx’s book because back in 1999 after I’d sent
off a couple of short stoies to Jinx who was the Editor of Lesbian
Short Fiction at the time I received a rejection letter the like ofwhich I had never received in the almost thirty years I’d been
receiving rejection letters. Jinx not only told me in an elaborate
point system why she was rejecting them but had added personaland detailed criticisms as well as submission guidelines that
seemed to suggest that if I took the trouble to take her advice she
might well accept a short story the next time round. I was so
impressed that I did as she’d advised and was thrilled when The
Definition of a Lesbian was accepted for publication and included(with a name change to Description of a Lesbian) in LSF issue no
5 January 1999, the first time I’d ever been published in the US.
As Jinx describes towards the end of her memoir, the firstissue of LSF came out in Spring 1996, issue 2 in Fall 1996, issue 3
in Fall 1997, issue 4 in 1998 and issue 5 in 1999 was,unfortunately due to ill health and other circumstances, the final
issue. In a long and varied life Jinx considers the LSF her ‘firstand only failure’ which in the scheme of things is a not what
could be called a bad effort.
Most lesbians in the US would know Jinx Beers as the96 • Sinister Wisdom 86 – Ignite!

founder, publisher and Editor of The Lesbian News which wasestablished in LA in August 1975 as a free, modest monthly
publication and by the time Jinx resigned fourteen years later had
grown to be a 64-page magazine still run by volunteers andfinancially supported by advertising. For founding such asignificant lesbian publication which is still going today, (‘thelongest running lesbian newspaper in the world’ as Jinx puts it),Jinx was included in Barbara Love’s book, Feminists Who Changed
America.
Jinx was the fifth child in her family of origin, knew froman early age that she was a lesbian, frequented the bar scene eventhough she didn’t like the taste of beer and was obviously out as abutch who rode a motor bike and wore leathers. She joined the
air force at eighteen, was posted to Germany for for three years
where she went to bed with her first lesbian lover and afterwards
took advantage of the GI bill to go to college and get a bachelors
degree majoring in psychology. Jinx worked hard all her life,
wrote poetry, had any number of lovers and didn’t retire till theage of 75.
This memoir describes a lesbian life of principles andcourage, determined effort and significant achievement. Jinx
Beers has served the lesbian community well in writing it.
Divas Don’t Yield by Sofia Quintero, One World
Ballantine Books, 2006, 339 pages, paperback, $13.95
Reviewed by Ruth Mountaingrove
According to Sofía Quintero, a working-class Puerto
Rican-Dominican from the South Bronx, she began writing thebook as a screenplay (Interstates) in 1998, and it has gone throughmany revisions and changes on its was to becoming Divas Don’t
Yield.
In Divas Don’t Yield, readers meet Jackie, a 21-year-old, 5’9” Afro-Latina woman. Jackie is pre-law—and a confirmed
heterosexual. Her friend, Hazel, is a lipstick lesbian who canhave any man she wants—but she wants Jackie. Hazel and Jackie
have known each other since they were 13 and are best friends.
They are both graduating from Fordham. Irena is 19 isSummer 2012 • 97

asthmatic, and heavily into tarot and New Age spirituality;
Lourdes, at 20, is about to change her major from pre-med tophotography—on the advice of Jackie.
These four chicas are on their way to a feminist
conference at San Francisco State University. It is Irena’s ideathat they keep a journal of the road trip. Through these journal
entries, we learn about these young women and the individual
viewpoint of each one. There are many problems on this roadtrip to California; one is that they are travelling with a credit
card that belongs to one of their mothers. Before that mothercancels the card, the four friends have gone from New York to
Nebraska.
Diva’s Don’t Yield is a novel about class, female bonding,friendship and self-discovery, as each woman learns who she isthrough the journal entries they each write. Jackie lives in theSouth Bronx. Lourdes, who is Cuban, lives on the West Side ofManhattan. Hazel is Dominican, and lives in Chelsea, working
part-time as a hair stylist; her mother will not come to thegraduation, but whether this is due to Hazel’s lesbianism is notclear. Hazel’s father is in prison upstate. Irena lives in Jersey City,
where her father has a grocery bodega. Irena’s mother preferred
to stay in the Caribbean.
Jackie is the organizer who expects every thing to go herway, and the conflicts come rolling in when the other three don’t
agree with her. Cultural clashes begin to rise: Lourdes belongs to
the group, Catholics for Choice; Irena finds Lourdes’s prayers,and her devotion to the Catholic Church, annoying; andLourdes finds Irena’s fascination with the tarot and her dietproblematic.
The odyssey begins in Lourdes’s SUV but an accident
with a taxi forces them to resume their trip in a [Ford] Tempo,
which breaks down but only delays them.
Hazel wants nightlife and gets it at a carnival—but notwhat she had in mind. Irena has been asking to go to a meeting
since they left New York so they have one outside of Omaha. A
confrontation with Jackie brings on a serious asthma attack for
Irena, and she spends three days in hospital at the University of
Nebraska Medical Center.
Jackie, Hazel and Lourdes lace their English with

98 • Sinister Wisdom 86 – Ignite!

Spanish. Irena is learning as she goes, so readers will learn withher because since there is usually a translation which follows the
Spanish sentences and phrases. In addition, there is a glossary of
Spanish terms and some cultural references, which is helpful andinteresting for the non-Spanish readers.
A Lesbian Love Advisor, The Sweet and Savory Arts ofLesbian Courtship by Celeste West, Cleis Press, 1989,
190 pages, $9.95
Reviewed by Ruth Mountaingrove
Celeste West’s A Lesbian Love Advisor is a gem from 1989
still relevant to lesbians today. A Lesbian Love Advisor is about a
lot more than courtship. West tells us of the steps of a
relationship cycle, stage one, first blush, the power struggle,
acceptance, commitment, and stage five, co-creation.
Lady Clitoressa is the wise woman who gives advice on
many subjects of interest to young and old lesbians. Lady
Clitoressa has a circle of women to which West belongs. They
discuss many different aspects of the art of lesbian love. This
advice is scattered through out the book. Lady Clitoressa is athinly veiled Elsa Gidlow. A Lesbian Love Advisor is Celeste’s love
letter to her.
Lady Clitoressa and her circle go in for ritual, too, eventhough West isn’t quite convinced of some of the hippy/dippy
aspects. Candles are featured as is chanting. Symbolic theatre—
being born again to women—is a circle. Other practice rituals
include coming out to mom, a circle of Commitment, and even a
ritual for break-up.
West explores a variety of questions about lesbian
relationships. How do you find a lover since everybody including
you have to earn a living? Well, bars are a possibility, ororganizations political or otherwise. West is a city gal so suggests
personal ads. These challenge you to learn who you are.
Describe the lover you are looking for. Not the usual LL: no pets,
no smoking, no drinking or dope. Have some lightheartedness,some fantasy with some practicality. West give us her ad but it ismuch too long for this review, but it got the results she wanted.

Summer 2012 • 99

There is the celibate lesbian who prefers her own
company and/or her own pleasure. Perhaps the celibate is justbetween lovers but she may actually be directing her sexual
energy into herself and projects for her own benefit.
There are live apart lesbian couples and the live-in
lesbian couples. for live-in couples there is housekeepery with one
lover not giving a rat’s ass how the apartment looks and the otherdriven crazy - who empties the cat box? West addresses money,
separate or joint accounts?, and the time and trust need toanswer that question. She also gives rules for fair fighting. Westsuggests that when you move in together that the first thing you
do is label what is yours and what is hers and if you buy
something jointly agree as to who will get it if you breakup.
She also takes up “jealousy heartburn”—how to handle
it and how not to and then she uses a word I never heard
before—omnigamy, in the area of monogamy/non-mongamy.
The second was popular in the 70s, and West calls the first anunnery for two.
Chapter VIII is titled “50 Ways to Leave Your Lover.”“Actually there is only one way to leave your lover with herlaughing and blowing you a kiss,” says West. “This chapter isabout being left.” What a difference that makes as anyone being
left can attest. The dark night of the soul. Instead let her leaveyou. Agreeing with her when she tells you of all your faults but
continue your bad habits.
West recommends safe sex highly. She points out thatwhile lesbian sex seems to be free of HIV you never know if yourlover to be has been with another lesbian who has used dirty
needles. So be prepared with dental dams, finger cots.
West, when she deals with areas she is not familiar with,has other lesbians write those sections: S and M, fantasy, having
an audience while you make love, theatre, pain with limits. Noneof these appeal to West or me but there you are.
Where do you pick up this wonderful book? Try Powells,
Amazon, and Google. It will be there in secondhand books.

100 • Sinister Wisdom 86 – Ignite!

When We Were Outlaws: A Memoir of Love &Revolution, Jeanne Cordova, Spinsters Ink, USA, 2011
Reviewed by Jean Taylor
Jeanne Cordova and I met briefly when several of us
repaired to a nearby cafe, Bosa Nova, for coffees andconversation after listening to Alix Dobkin talking about her
autobiography, My Red Blood, at the June Mazer LesbianArchives in LA, in June 2010. Little did I realise at the time as I
listened to these American lesbians reminiscing about their lives
back in the day, that Cordova was writing her memoirs and that
I would not only be able to buy the book at the local lesbian andgay bookshop, Hares & Hyenas, in Melbourne Australia in 2012
but that I would find it to be a fascinating read.
When We Were Outlaws is not a conventional book but was
written, as Cordova puts it in the Author’s Note, as a ‘novelized
memoir’. This means that conversations are recalled verbatim,
her lesbian love life documented in intimate detail and thepolitics of the time, from early to mid-1970s, described as thealmost inevitable political clashes between lesbians and gay men,lesbian feminists and socialist feminists and Lesbian Nation
against the status quo. Of course, the personal being political
Cordova also deals with the politics of lesbian relationships at atime when non-monogamy was considered de rigeur, and the
butch and femme erotic attraction, even for radical lesbian
feminists such as herself, was impossible to resist.
Born in Germany to an Irish mother and a Mexican
father, Cordova was the first of twelve children. While her
upbringing was painful in the extreme Cordova credits thephysical abuse she suffered at the hands of her father for her
fierce emphasis on social justice and his extreme homophobia as
the reason she was cut off from her family for many years.
The Foreword by Lillian Faderman notes that, ‘Jeanne
was on the scene and in the front of the pack for virtually every
major event or piece of business that involved the Los Angeles
lesbian movement in the 1970s. She not only helped organise the1971 gay pride parade in LA, but she also brought gender parity
to the parade - lesbians up front and in equal numbers with gay

Summer 2012 • 101

men.’ Lillian goes on to add that Cordova was unusual in that
‘While many lesbian-feminists wanted to throw gay men out withthe bath water, Jeanne sensibly argued that it was the duty oflesbians to ‘drag our gay brothers into enlightenment.’
Cordova’s job as a reporter for the Los Angeles Free Press
lead her into some hair-raising situations. At a time when thehunt for Patty Hearst and the members of the Symbionese
Liberation Army was at its height, when the Weather
Underground were being hounded and the Neo Nazis’organisation the National Socialist Liberation Front were on therise, Cordova interviewed Emily Harris, ‘John’ and Joe
Tommassi respectively at great risk to her own personal safety.
Even when she was cornered by the FBI, she managed to makegood her escape and courageously continued her reporting.
But it is probably as founder and editor of The LesbianTide, 1971 - 1980, a follow-on from her time as editor of The
Ladder, which combined her love of lesbian community, herpassion for lesbian feminist politics and her considerable abilities
as a writer, that she is justifiably most proud. As she puts it: ‘Cladin pyjamas, I hoisted myself from the bed and walked down thehall to the second bedroom, where my child - The Lesbian Tide lived. I sniffed the smell. Fresh ribbon ink and carbon paper
mixed with cigarette smoke. I loved it. This room was commandcentral, the hub of my life.’ (p33)This book was made even more enjoyable for me by themention of the lesbian feminists I have met and come to admire,such as Judy Freespirit and Ariana Manov, as well as Ivy Bottini
and Robin Tyler who made me laugh out loud with their standup comic routines at the National Old Lesbians Organising for
Change Conferences in LA in 2008 and in Cleveland in 2010.
The inclusion of photos of these and other lesbians, including
one which includes Jinx Beers, ‘soon to be Lesbian News publisher’in a boat with Cordova in 1974, gives an additional depth to thetext. The only thing missing, as this is much more an herstorical
document of real events and people than a fictionalised account,is an Index.
Above all, it’s her radical lesbian feminist politics and herpassion for the revolution, Lesbian Nation, and the on-goingfight to free her people as she calls us from the tyranny of102 • Sinister Wisdom 86 – Ignite!

patriarchal misogyny and lesbophobia that is the mainstay of thisbook. This is personified in her political convictions and her
determination and courage to put herself on the front line.
Whether it’s taking on her gay male mentor, Morris Kight, for
his sexism and his craving for power at all costs during theconfrontation and picketing of the Gay Community Services
Center for not being willing to include lesbians in equal numbers:‘GCSC could not afford to polarise LA’s lesbian and gay
community. It was also terrible PR for the Center. Surely Morris
could not allow this to go on. He had to give in, and soon. And
yet I was veteran enough to know that drastic measures
sometimes had greater than intended drastic consequences.’(p121) Or going to secret locations to interview people wanted by
the FBI, as well as her strength and ability to organise events
such as the National Lesbian Conference at UCLA in April 1973
and a few years later the National Lesbian Feminist Organisationin 1978.
It is interesting to realise that while Cordova was actively
engaged at the forefront of the lesbian feminist revolution in LA,
writing her regular pieces for the Freep and overseeing themonthly publication of The Tide, she was only in her 20s. Thenagain, to have done all that she did and at the same time to have
had one primary and several other lovers on the go at any one
time she’d have needed all that youthful energy to hack the pace.
As a lesbian herstorian myself these days, it is gratifying
to know that many more of us are also documenting our lesbian
herstory. And to read in the Endnotes where Cordova mentions
her own FBI file, (which any self-respecting radical lesbian
feminist American had back then, apparently): ‘I hope to obtain
more details for my next book on lesbian feminist history.’
If her next book is as fascinating as When We Were
Warriors it’ll be well worth waiting for.

Summer 2012 • 103

The Nightmares of Sasha Weitzwoman by Batya
Weinbaum, Femspec Books, 2010, 582 pages,
paperback, $25
Reviewed by Nina G. Wouk
Reading this book is like listening to music: Never mind
the calendar-chronology; listen for the entry and development ofeach theme. The points of view intertwine like instruments in an
orchestra. Maybe they are all different people and maybe they
are only those people as dreamed by Sasha as she huddles undera blanket in a freezing Jerusalem hotel room. The sexual liaisons between the pregnancy-seeking Sasha and her closet bisexual
Iraqi Jewish landlord, between his wife and the yellow-lipsticked
left-wing folk-singer, between the landlord and his various male
employees - may take place in the flesh or only in the intangible
realm of desire. The boundaries - between pre-1967 Israel andthe more-or-less Palestinian territories, between living and dead,between hallucination and impersonation of a hallucination remain as hard to pin down as the different characters' take on
the same event remain wildly and often hilariously divergent.
Desire routinely collapses distance. The natural jet-lagged
misunderstandings of a foreigner spin into threads of misdirectionthat become whole new webs of action and (delayed) reaction.
How (much) can a shared dream reshape reality? I am not surethat we are meant to ever sort out what 'really' happens. I am
reasonably sure that what 'really' happens is not the point.

104 • Sinister Wisdom 86 – Ignite!

Letter to the Editors
Dear Sinister Wisdom,
I have to object to the unethical attack on Lierre Keithand her book, The Vegetarian Myth: Food, Justice, andSustainability. It is one thing to disagree with and to try tocounter her book with respect, but Selma Miriam and Noel Furie
comparing Lierre's work, as a longtime Radical Lesbian Feminist,to a book promoting sado-masochism is beyond insulting.
I can't imagine another Lesbian Feminist's book being
attacked in such unethical ways, such as saying Lierre's book is“full of lies,” without giving one example. We are just to believe
them? Are they aware that their vendetta against Lierre is similar
to how some male supremacist groups have condemned Lierre -all in an attempt to coherce people to not read her? Do they evenknow or care about the frequent death threats she gets, and that
she was physically attacked for daring to speak at the Anarchist
Book fair? (Three cowardly men wearing masks ran from behind
Lierre, an older disabled Lesbian, and each smashed her in theface with "pies" full of cayenne, knowing that the blows
themselves could further damage her spine. They videotaped it
all in an attempt to humiliate Lierre -- which backfired.
Why are there such vicious attacks on Lierre to censor
her? Her book is beautiful and is literally saving lives. Did theyeven read her book or did they deliberately mislead readers byasking if Lierre was a "junk food vegan," even though she said
clearly in her book that she ate as healthily as she could in her
almost 20 years of being vegan until she is now permanently
disabled as a result of not getting adequate nutrition. (It is clear
from reading her book that she knows a great deal about health.)
Twenty years ago, I and two other friends wrote anarticle with some of the ideas Lierre has written about because we
saw how feminists used the issue of veganism and vegetarianism
to bully and humiliate other women. The issue of what we eat has
been one of the most divisive and destructive disagreements in
our feminist movement, and it continues. Recently, non-vegans
were physically threatened by a vegan in a feminist facebook
group. It doesn't matter if we say how being an ethical omnivore
has greatly improved our health (in my case, increasing organic

Summer 2012 • 105

saturated fat and protein and reducing carbs stopped all of myheart symptoms. Other friends have stopped diabetes andsuccessfully fought serious cancers.) It also doesn't matter that weknow so many longtime vegans and vegetarians who havepermanent health damage, including some friends who were insuch pain that they committed suicide. We are still treated with
contempt and harassment.
We are animals and all animals need to eat other living
beings to survive. Men and patriarchy have taught us theiroffensive hierarchy of "superiority," with Nordic men at the top,
women and other animals next, and plants at the bottom. But lesspatriarchal cultures recognize that plant are alive and feel too. I
believe all living beings think and feel. I would rather not eat
anyone. I love animals. I am the person who waters and feeds the
spiders in our house. I will grab wasps and bees with my barehands to rescue them if someone is about to kill them. (No, they
don't sting me and the spiders I pick up never bite me.) But we allneed to eat someone to live and I do not believe that it is morally
inferior or wrong to eat one large free-range animal, like a steer,
who could feed a woman for a year than it is to eat countless tinyplant lives. Lierre describes how eating carefully as an omnivore
actually results in less animals dying, including less animals being
driven to extinction.
A major contradiction that we wrote about is that manyvegans have carnivorous animals, who they either starve (driving
those animals to kill wild animals, including endangered species)
or who they feed meat -- the meat that women are supposed to bedenied for our health. Why the double standard?
Some writers have refuted the flawed “China Study” byMichael R. Eades, M.D. There are several blogs by former
vegans, describing why they had to become omnivores before
their health was destroyed. These blogs include Paleosister’s Blog,
paleosister.wordpress.com, Voracious—Vegan No More,voraciouseats.com, and Let Them Eat Meat, letthemeatmeat.com.
And for those who haven't read the book so many wantburned and censored, Lierre Keith’s website islierrekeith.com/vegmyth.htm.
Bev Jo106 • Sinister Wisdom 86 – Ignite!

Contributors
Kyle Anne Bates is a writer, artist and photographer originally fromSouthern California. She has published her work in many journals andanthologies, including, Orion Magazine, The Gay and Lesbian Review, Askew,
Electrum, The Aspen Anthology, Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies, The JamesWhite Review, The Dan River Anthology, Poetry L.A., and the website, Good
Intentions. Her short story, “How It Is,” was published in Glimmer Train,
and nominated for a Pushcart prize. She was a columnist and feature
writer for Frontiers: The Nation’s Best LGBTQ Magazine and the Fullerton
Observer. She has read her work widely in California, and her plays haveappeared in theaters in the Los Angeles area. She is working on a novel
and a series of one-act plays, and lives outside Seattle with her partnerand her dogs.
Sarah Brooks is a lesbian mother, teacher, and writer who lives in theWest and tries to find small pieces of meaning in a world that often
makes very little sense. She is an MFA student at Naropa University in
Boulder, Colorado.
Betsy Brown is a middle-aged European-American old-school lesbian
feminist who lives in Oklahoma City. She is working in a public library
and attending library school, and feels incredibly fortunate to havefinally discovered right livelihood. She is teaching herself to write novels
and is a five-time winner of National Novel Writing Month. She isblessed with a marvelous girlfriend, three excellent cats, a weekly Mary
Daly discussion group, and a charming fixer-upper that she hopes to fix
before she dies. She is slowly working her way back into politicalactivism and believes that an egalitarian world is possible. And
sometimes, she also writes poetry.
Stephania Byrd, a native of Indiana, moved to northeast Ohio in
1996. She did her M.A. in poetry and postgraduate study in urban
education at Cleveland State University. She is a tenured assistantprofessor at Lakeland Community College. Her work has appeared in
American Voice, The Kenyon Review, Cave Canem Anthology II & III, Lakeland
Forum and Eclipsing a Nappy New Millenium. “Etiology of Cool” originallyappeared in Eclipsing a Nappy New Millennium: An Anthology of Midwestern
Poetry (Purdue UP: Lafayette, IN, 1999.) “Persephone Departs the
Upcountry” originally appeared in Lakeland Forum, 2002-2003.
Susan DiPronio lives in Philadelphia where she founded Pink Hanger
Presents which is dedicated to giving voice and a face to the unique life

Summer 2012 • 107

experiences of women, exploring their stories. Susan writes poems,
plays, nonfiction, flash fiction, children's stories and film. Her plays andsort films have been widely shown and performed. Susan was chosen byPeter Barberie, curator of photography at the Philadelphia Museum ofArt, as one of the Emerging Photographers of 2009 for Project Basho. A
recipient of an Art for Change Grant from the Leeway Foundation,
Susan focuses on art and writing workshops with the homeless anddisadvantaged. Their art is included in ongoing visual and audio
installations, which are mounted in the Fringe Festival and area art
galleries.
Lisa Dordal (M.Div., M.F.A.) lives in Nashville, Tennessee with herpartner, Laurie, and their two retired greyhounds. Her poetry has
appeared in the Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion, Bridges: A Jewish
Feminist Journal, Cave Wall, The Sow’s Ear Poetry Review, Georgetown Review,
St. Sebastian Review and Southern Women’s Review, as well as in theanthology Milk and Honey: A Celebration of Jewish Lesbian Poetry. Her
chapbook, Commemoration, is available from Finishing Line Press.
A New York City grown cupcake enthusiast and college sophomore
with neurotic tendencies, Camonghne Felix was featured on HBO’s
Brave New Voices as a member of the Urban Word 2010 team, whobecame the 2010 National Brave New Voices Champions. She is a twotime New York Knicks Poetry Slam Finalist and the first Runner-Up ofthe 2010 NYC Youth Poet Laureate Program. In 2011, she is theseventeenth ranked poet in the world. In early 2011, Camonghne
opened for esteemed writer Sapphire, author of the novel PUSH, andhas been honored to share stages with Talib Kweli, Common, Rosario
Dawson, Mahogany L Browne, and La Bruja. In November of 2011,
she was profiled in The Forward as a Young Jewish Philanthropic Hero.
You can find her work in various publications, including Pank Magazine
and Kill Author Magazine. She writes about the small things that happen
when we’ve stopped looking.
Alison Gerig is the Executive Director of The Women's Therapy
Center in Philadelphia, a feminist mental health non-profit offering lowcost counseling. Alison worked for a number of years in the area of
HIV/Aids prevention and is the former Clinical Director at the
Mazzoni Center. She is also in private practice where her focus is on
gender identity, trauma resolution and life transitioning.
Joanna Hoffman is a spoken word poet originally from Silver Spring,
Maryland, now living in Brooklyn. She has been on five National Poetry

108 • Sinister Wisdom 86 – Ignite!

Slam (NPS) teams. In 2006, her team performed on Finals stage andranked fourth in the nation. In 2007, she was the DC/Baltimore Grand
Slam Champion and the Individual World Poetry Slam (IWPS)
representative for Baltimore. Since relocating to New York for grad
school, she has joined the Spoken World Almanac Project and has beenfeatured at the Nuyorican Poets Cafe. In 2011, she represented Urbana
at the 2011 Women of the World Poetry Slam (WOWPS), National
Poetry Slam, and Individual World Poetry Slam, placing in the top ten
at all three. This year, she represented Louder Arts at WOWPS, placing
fourth overall, and is the Grand Slam Champion for the 2012 Urbana
team. She is the 2012 Champion of Capturing Fire, the queer
international poetry competition. She has been published in Spindle
and as part of the recent GirlChild Press anthology, Women’s Work, andthe Jewish lesbian poetry anthology Milk and Honey. When not
performing poetry, she works at a nonprofit organization and runs in
Prospect Park.
A native of Great Britain, Julie E. Justicz is a fiction writer who now
lives and works in Oak Park, Illinois, with her partner, Mary, and their
two children. As an undergraduate, she attended Emory University and
Brown University. Julie received her M.F.A. from Vermont College in
1995. While working on her M.F.A., she finished a collection of shortstories, Love As We Knew It. Julie recently finished her first novel entitled
A Boy Called Home. She received a Glimmer Train “Family Matters”
competition honorable mention for a chapter from the novel’s firstsection. Julie has published other works in Sinister Wisdom and The Archon.
Julie completed residencies at the Virginia Center for Creative Arts in2010 and at the Ragdale Foundation in River Forest, Illinois in
December 2008 and in November 2007. A graduate of the University of
Chicago Law School, Julie worked for many years in legal services andwith a nonprofit disability rights agency.
Amanda Laughtland is the author of Postcards to Box 464 (Bootstrap
Productions) and the editor/publisher of Teeny Tiny Press. She teaches
English at Edmonds Community College, just north of Seattle.
Devi K. Lockwood believes in the power of words. She is a secondyear undergraduate student at Harvard who loves rowing and breathing
and wiggle room for spontaneity. She studies Folklore & Mythology andwrites, often.
Natasha Miller is the voice of wounds exposed, and the healing balmof poetry applied to the human spirit. The passionate 26 year-old

Summer 2012 • 109

Detroit, MI native is a writer, performance poet, author, publisher
dedicated activist, producer, actress and an aspiring motivational
speaker. Since her debut, just over four years ago, Natasha has provento be a poetical powerhouse. After one year on the performance circuit,in 2007, she was crowned Detroit Poetry Slam team’s Grand SlamChampion, and has been a member of four National Poetry Slam
teams. She has also been a Women of The World Poetry Slam top five
finalist three out of the last four years once ranking as high as the third
female slam poet in the World. Natasha continued her impressive
record by leading and coaching her own slam team to a championshipat the 2010 Midwest Rustbelt Poetry Slam, where she also came out
ranking #2 overall in the individual competition. Natasha has awed
audiences across the country at universities, festivals and numerous
venues including slams and shows like the famous Nuyorican Poets Caféin New York, Vancouver Poetry slam, Seattle poetry slam, Girl Fest
Hawaii and Chicago’s Green Mill. She has premiered on stages withcelebrity actors and comedians Oscar award winning Mo’nique, Star of
the movie “Paper Hearts” Charlyne Yi, Brandon T. Jackson, actor
Malcolm Jamal Warner, legendary poet Jessica Care Moore, hip-hop
artist Talib Kweli, and many more. Mo’Nique, impressed, personallyinvited Natasha to feature on her radio show. In 2010, she starred in anational commercial campaign for Sprite. In the same year, she released
her solo spoken word album “Poetry for Change,” and featured in thestage play “The Revolution’s In The Ladies Room” produced by Jessica
care Moore. Natasha is the former ranking number 5 female slam poetin the World. She now produces the popular “Its Not About You”
Poetry Slam Series. Recently she started her own publishing company“All I Wanna Say Publishing”, in 2010 she published her first book ofquotes “Dreams Of A Beginner”, and in 2011 she published her second
book “Coming Out of Nowhere,” a Social Networking Memoir. She iscurrently working with popular video director Erica D Hayes on a
documentary that focuses on prostitution and placement in thetransgendered community. Natasha uses her words to enlighten, create
equality, imbue life, and most importantly spread love and peace in the
tradition of great leaders before her.
Charan P. Morris is a poet/educator/performer transplanted from
Chicago to New York. She is a Lambda Literary Foundation 2011
Emerging LGBT Voices Fellow whose work has been published in The
Gallatin Review and NYU’s Brownstone Magazine. She has performed as afeature poet for various audiences throughout East Coast and Midwest.
Her work fuels public dialogue around colorism, homophobia, and the110 • Sinister Wisdom 86 – Ignite!

effects of war. Of course, sometimes her work is just about being
human.
Ruth Mountaingrove has published two chapbooks: Rhythms of Springat twenty-two, and For Those Who Cannot Sleep at fifty-four the latterbeing influenced by Carl Young and Gurdjieff before discovering the
Women’s Movement. Co-editor with Jean Mountaingrove of
WomanSpirit and The Blatant Image. Reach her at mountaingrove@suddenlink.net.
Karen Norris lives in Wetumpka, AL.
C.A. Popovich lives and works in Southeast Michigan. Her first visit toProvincetown, Massachusetts for Women's Week was an inspiration towrite about it and share it with other lesbians.
Nancy Marie Santos is 57 years old, born to Puerto Rican parents—
an alcoholic, drug-addicted father and a saint of a mother. She wasraised half way in the Spanish Harlem, ghettos of New York City. When
she was eleven, her parents divorced; Nancy and her mother moved to
Puerto Rico. Nancy graduated from the University of Puerto Rico, andshe discovered that she was, and is, a lesbian. Her childhood was notpretty, but that is another story in itself. Nancy now lives in Washington
State. She has always enjoyed poetry; writing is one of her passions,besides photography and drawing.
Shae Savoy is a radical lesbian feminist, poet, priestess and teacher.
She teaches Poetry on the Page at Bent Writing Institute, the only
LGBT writing school in the world, as well as workshops on Writing as a
Sacred Practice; Writing the Tarot; Writing the Body Poetic; andGrowing Out Our Mermaid Tales (a writing workshop for women). A
Tarot practitioner and healer, she believes there’s nothing that can’t behealed with deep listening and love medicine. Shae is an M.F.A.
candidate at Goddard College, where she’s getting down and dirty withpoetry. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in J Journal: New
Writing on Justice; Eternal Haunted Summer, Requiem Magazine, the anthology
Once Upon a Time and appears frequently in We’Moon, including theanthology In the Spirit of We’Moon: Celebrating 30 Years. She blogs atshaesavoy.com.
Although she has had a love for books her entire life, Aisha Sidibe,of Haitian, Cuban and Ivorian heritage, was nine when poetry was selfactualized. She has been writing ever since. Music has also been a majorSummer 2012 • 111

force behind her writing. From poetry, to fiction to memoir, Aisha has
felt comfortable in cross-genre writing. As a student at Bronx
Community College, she worked hard on exploring her writing and to
influence others to do so as well. She was not only President of theCreative Writing Club she revived, but also serves as the Poetry Editorof Thesis Literary Magazine and provided workshops for students in both
memoir and poetry. Sidibe’s work has been published in severpublications, and she has spoken at writing panels in Harlem and on the
BCC campus. Sidibe is currently a student at Hunter College, studying
English with a minor in Anthropology. She continues her research on
the intercultural relationship between African Americans and West
Africans in New York. She currently lives in the Bronx. She enjoys
language, artistic expression, sitting down and writing lovely absurdities.
“Ensorcellment” originally appeared in Thesis.
Grace Sikorski received her Ph.D. and M.A. in English at The
Pennsylvania State University and her B.A. in English at Queens
College. Her research explores fiction of the twentieth century andtheories of sexuality and gender. Currently, as an Associate Professor atAnne Arundel Community College, she teaches courses in English andGender and Sexuality Studies.
Jean Taylor’s latest book, Stroppy Dykes: Radical Lesbian Feminist Activism
in Victoria During the 1980s, was launched by the singer-songwriter Judy
Small in Melbourne Australia in March 2012.
Vanessa Vitiello lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts with her
girlfriend, two cats, two rats, one dog, and various insects, arachnids,
and bacterial colonies which she prefers not to dwell too much upon.
She writes literary science fiction and science-y literary fiction andappeared in Orion's Child Magazine in January 2012 with her short story“Follow Me Home” as well as worldwide to great acclaim in her
imagination.
Kate Yarrow’s story “Seduction Scene” was published in Sinister
Wisdom Sixteen, Spring 1981, under the name Irene Yarrow. In the past,
she published both fiction and poetry in various literary magazines. Her
essay “Woman Becoming” appeared in Amazon Quarterly in 1974, and in
the Lesbian Reader anthology in 1975. Kate was born in New York City,and moved to California in 1986. She lives in Oakland with her partnerof eighteen years. They are among the 18,000 legally married same-sex
couples in California. Kate came out in her early thirties. She had aradio program called Everywomanspace on Pacifica Radio's WBAI-FM

112 • Sinister Wisdom 86 – Ignite!

in the early 70's. She worked in the nonprofit world, most recently
leading an adult literacy program connected with a library. She is now
retired and spending a great deal of time writing.
Martha Yoak was born in West Virginia in 1942 and grew up inseveral small towns in Iowa. She graduated from Mitchellville HighSchool in 1960, received her BA and Eds from the University of Iowa.
Martha Yoak's work has been published in many quarterlies; she has
given many public readings, including television and radio broadcasts.
Yoak lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and enjoys biking, swimming,and music.

Summer 2012 • 113

Where To Find Sinister Wisdom
Antigone Books (Tucson, AZ)
Bear Pond Books (Montpelier, VT)
Bloodroot (Bridgeport, CT)
Bluestockings Bookstore (New York, NY)
Bookwoman (Austin, TX)
Giovanni’s Room (Philadelphia, PA)
Galaxy Books (Hardwick, VT)
In Other Words (Portland, OR)
Goddard College Library (Plainfield, VT)
Laurel Book Store (Oakland, CA)
Dartmouth Barnes and Noble (Hanover, NH)
Wild Iris Books (Gainesville, FL)
Our list of places to find Sinister Wisdom is growing! Join the Sinister
Wisdom Community Distribution Network and help spread thework of Sinister Wisdom. More information is available atwww.SinisterWisdom.org and on our Facebook page,
http://www.facebook.com/SinisterWisdom.

114 • Sinister Wisdom 86 – Ignite!

Calls for Submissions
Sinister Wisdom consider submissions of artwork, fiction, poetry,
essays, creative non-fiction, and articles for inclusion in Sinister
Wisdom throughout the year. Please email submissions toJulieREnszer@gmail.com and MerryGangemi@gmail.com.
Special issues or special sections can be guest edited by volunteer
editors. Email the co-editors with ideas for special issues.

Special Issue Call for Submissions:
Lesbian Health Care Workers
For a special issue on Lesbian Health Care Workers (including,but by no means limited to nurses, physicians, mental healthworkers, EMTs, nursing assistants, educators, and physicaltherapists), please send essays, fiction, poetry, and/or other formsof expression (e.g., visual arts) on the topic(s) of:• Factors that have influenced your decisions on whether
or not to come out at work
• Impact of coming out or not coming out on your wellbeing when you were a student in a professional or
occupational health career program• Impact of coming out or not coming out at work—how
has it affected you, your patients/clients/residents, andthe quality of care you are able to provide?
• Positive and/or negative consequences of being a lesbian
on your job(s) or career
Refer to the Sinister Wisdom website www.sinisterwisdom.org for
Submission Guidelines. The deadline for this issue is September
15, 2013—but don’t put it off till the last minute! Inquires andsubmissions should be sent to guest editor Elizabeth Hansen
ehansen125@gmail.com

Summer 2012 • 115

Advertisements

116 • Sinister Wisdom 86 – Ignite!

Summer 2012 • 117

118 • Sinister Wisdom 86 – Ignite!

Summer 2012 • 119

Journal of
Lesbian Studies
Explore the journal online atwww.tandfonline.com/WJLSEDITOR
Esther D. Rothblum, PhD
San Diego State University
5500 Campanile Drive
San Diego, CA 92182
Email:
erothblu@mail.sdsu.edu
PUBLICATION DETAILS
Volume 16, 2012
4 issues per year
ISSN Print 1089-4160
ISSN Online 1540-3548

Gender and Sexuality
Arena
The Gender and Sexuality
Arena is an online resource
for academics, students,
researchers, and practitioners
who need to keep up-to-date withthe latest news and events. For acomplete listing of related books
and journals, visit the arena at:www.gender-and-sexualityarena.com

The Journal of Lesbian Studies/%!&*+ cultural, historical, and interpersonal impact of the$*!&/()!&'&*'!+0#(!&$$))*- professionals, academic, or general - informed
& ,( +' + '& ,))&+ 4&!&* )*',)*
and community concerns. Independent scholars,()'**')**+,&+*&$0('($.!$$4&+ !*interdisplinary journal essential on the topic oflesbian studies.
When lesbian issues and interests overlap
with queer issues, the unique needs concerns, and!&+)*+*'$*!&&+$'*+!&+ * ,5 
Journal of Lesbian Studies helps sort through theconfusion, fostering new lesbian scholarship without
cutting ties to grassroots activism. The journal
!-*+ $*!&/()!&&!&+)&+!'&$&
multicultural voice, presenting book reviews, poetry,
letters to the editor, debates, and commentaries.
An enlightening balance of scholarly andpractical information, the Journal of LesbianStudies presents an interdisciplinary body of work!&  '%($+$0 $*!& '&+/+   "',)&$ !* vital forum for research and theory, addressing thehistory, politics, science, race, literature, and life
cycle issues, of woman who love women.
To view a FREE online sample copy, visit
www.tandfonline.com/WJLSTO SUBSCRIBE, CONTACT:
www.tandfonline.com/WJLS
0$'))&!*1++&',)&$*,*+'%))-!
 *+&,++)+1 !$$( !  $

()**2 31/ 
Email: customerservice@taylorandfrancis.com

120 • Sinister Wisdom 86 – Ignite!

Sinister Wisdom
A Multicultural Lesbian
Literary & Art Journal
The oldest surviving lesbian
literary journal
publishing since 1976

Create, read, write, draw, explore, cry,fantasize, argue, celebrate, learn, teach,laugh, relate with writers and artists like
Gloria Anzaldua, Beth Brant, Crystos, Tee A.
Corinne, Alix Dobkin, Elana Dykewomon,
Ferron, Katherine Forrest, Carolyn Gage,
JEB, Terri Jewell, Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz,
Aly Kim, Irena Klepfisz, Sharon Lim-Hing,
Phyllis Lyon, Victoria Lena Manyarrows,
Del Martin, Cherri Moraga, Adrienne Rich,
Sapphire, Barbara Smith, Jean Weisinger,
Cris Williamson, Judith K. Witherow, Merle
Woo, Julia Youngblood, zana & many more!

Subscribe Today!
Subscription Rates: 1 year = 3 issues
Individuals: 1 year $20, 2 year $34 (inside U.S.)$25 (USD) (outside U.S.)
Hardship: $10-15					Libraries: 1 year $33.
Sustainer: $50+ (Sinister Wisdom, a non-profit welcomes contributions of all sizes)
Sinister Wisdom is free on request to women in prisons and psychiatric institutions.
Back issues available for $6 each plus $2 shipping for the first issue and $1 for each
additional issue.

Subscribe online at www.SinisterWisdom.org/subscribe.html using PayPal.
Or send a check or money order toSinister Wisdom
PO Box 3252
Berkeley, CA 94703

Name
Address
City		State		ZipEmail AddressIgnite!

Featuring Work by:Kyle Anne Bates
Betsy Brown
Sarah Brooks
Stephania Byrd
Susan DiPronio
Lisa Dordal
Camonghne Felix
Joanna Hoffman
Julie E. Justicz
Amanda Laughtland
Devi K. Lockwood
Natasha Miller
Charan Morris
C.A. Popovich
Nancy Santos
Shae Savoy
Aisha Sidibe
Vanessa VitielloKate Yarrow
Martha Yoak

$6.00