SINISTER WISDOMSINISTER~M 24)
Editors and publishers: Michelle Cliff and Adrienne Rich
Typesetting and design: Judith Pendleton
Annie Graham Co., Iowa City, Iowa
Cover drawing by Karen Sjoholm: Study for the Grandmotherfigure, In My Mother's House. Charcoal, 41 x 69 in.
Volunteer workers: Janet Aalfs, Paulla Ebron, Crane Willemse.
Crane Willemse has been our reader for thecassette edition distributed by the Womyn's
Braille Press.
Printed by Iowa City Women's Press, Iowa City, Iowa
Bound by A Fine Bind, Iowa City, Iowa
ISSN: 0196-1853

Founding editors: Harriet Desmoines (Ellenberger) andCatherine Nicholson
Copyright © Sinister Wisdom. All rights reserved to individual
authors and artists.
.
Individual subscriptions: 4 issues for $13; 8 issues, $25.
Out-of-U.S.: 4 issues, $15 (U.S. dollars, please).
Institutional: 4 issues, $25. Hardship: $6. Supporting: $25 and up.
Free on request to women in prisons or mental institutions.
NEW .ADDRESS: SINISTER WISDOM, P.O. BOX 1023,
ROCKLAND, MAINE 04841.

Contents
3 Notes for a Magazine: Adrienne Rich, Michelle Cliff
prologue # 1: Moving Day; a poem by Michelle Parkerson
Main Street: 1953, narrative by Joanna Russ
Cognate, a poem by Jean Swallow
Lesbians Have Immortal Children, a poem by Mamie Mahoney
24 Daydreams on a Subway Train, a poem by Patricia Fagan
25 Reading Maps, a poem by Minnie Bruce Pratt
9
11
14
22

33 I Ching: To Kat, narrative by Cheiron Sariko McMahill
36 Class Acts, a poem by Sherry Sylvester
41 Rediscovering the Heart, dialogue between Sue Dove Gambill
and Rachel deVries
56 Two drawings by Karen Sjoholm
58 Censorship, a poem by Karen Brodine
62 The Deception, a poem by Kathy Eberly
64 Re-membering: The Colors of Silence, a poem by
Kelly Anne Munger
65 When We Pry Our Eyes Open, a poem by>1artha Courtot
67 Black Against a Clear Sky, a poem by Theresa Barry
69 Growing Up? and Spring/Song, two poems by Susan Shernian
72
89
92
94

The Swashbuckler, narrative by Lee Lynch
Of Al~hea and Flaxie and Gail, two poems by Cheryl Clarke
To the Very Young Womon, a poem by Valerie Olson
Photographs by Jan Phillips

96
97
99
103
105

Almost Aubade, a poem by Marilyn Hacker
My mother is an orphan, a poem by Patricia Jones
Insect Is an Anagram, a poem by Roseann Lloyd
Aunt Pat, a poem by Rebecca Ellisfrom Natural Birth, prose poems by Toi Derricotte1110 Fine Ligament of Sympathy, a poem by Susan WoodThompson
114 from Communicating, a poem by Jacqueline Lapidus
116 Small Infidelities, a poem by Rebecca Ellis
117 Two Journeys, a poem by Melissa Cannon
120 Rain So Thick It Looks Like Snow, poems by
Beverly A. Smith
123 Heartshed, A Hard Rain, and The Blood-Letting, three
poems by Joy Harjo
127
129
133
135

Just to Go On, a poem by Marilyn Hadfield
Changing Skin, a poem by Catherine Risingfiame Moirai
The Anthropologist, a poem by Martha Courtot
Waulking Song, a poem by Minnie Bruce Pratt

Reviews
143
151
157
163
168
175

Cherrie Moraga on Fight Back!
Judith Barrington on Annapurna: A Woman's Place
Joy Harjo on Audre Lorde's Chosen Poems
Gloria 1. Joseph on Zami
Myra Glazer on Keeper of Accounts
Joan Nestle on Nice Jewish Girls

186 Notes on Contributors
188 Announcements2Adrienne Rich

Notes for a Magazine
In January 1981, when Michelle Cliff and I assumed full and equal
responsibility for Sinister Wisdom, we made a pact with each other:that we would pass on the life of the magazine before we ourselves
became burnt-out, both for its sake and ours. We saw it from thefirst as an absorbing, but temporary, commitment. During the ensuing two and a half years or more, we have published eight issues,
making visible work of which we are proud, both by women alreadyknown in the movement and outside, and by writers and artists
whose first publication was in these pages. One double issue-"AGathering of Spirit" -was entirely organized and edited by Beth
Brant; we remained responsible for production and basic distribution.
At the time we took on SW -a well-known lesbian/feminist
journal already four years old - other changes were taking place in
our lives and around us. The military budget was skyrocketing,basic public services undercut, the political climate was becoming
more repressive. Female poverty in particular was deepening. Within
the political hierarchy and the mainstream media there has been .
clear license for heightened anti-feminism, racism, anti-Semitism,and scapegoating of "others" - among them, lesbians, welfare mothers,
women outside the nuclear family. From the first, there was an urgency to our work, since we wanted SW to be part of the counterpressure against those forces.
During this period I went through an escalation of the rheumatoid arthritis I have lived with for thirty-three years. Within two
and a half years I had orthopedic surgery twice, and began learning
both to live in a new relationship to disability, and to meet pain andattrition with a wide variety of healing approaches; finally, to stabilize
my health. During much of the time we have edited SW I havebeen slowed down by physical pain and its impact on the spirit.
Michelle has carried, with unhesitating sense of purpose, far morethan her share in the running of the magazine. We both worked
through and remained jointly responsible for all substantive decisions,3

but essentially, she became the managing and sustaining editor,
whose dedication, skill and energy kept the body and soul of SW together. (It has therefore seemed truly ironic that some correspondents and contributors chose to assume that I was the "real" editor,or the only one.)
One of our real resources was that each of us knew of the otherthat she was not a quitter, that she would continue to do her utmost.
Another was the support of members of the local women's community, without whose work and spirit we simply could not havegone on. I want to mention here especially Janet Aalfs, Liza Deep
Moss, Paulla Ebron, Angela Giudice, Victoria Redel, Crane Willemse-who took time from other political work, jobs, school, andsometimes personal problems, to come and help us. This has beena time of constraint and instability for small businesses (and a lesbian/feminist journal may be art, spirit, vision, politics, but it is also,
unless privately supported and given away free, a small business)and of slashed Federal and state funding for the arts as well as forhuman services. SW received two grants from the Coordinating
Council of Literary Magazines, matched by volunteer labor andcontributions, and they were crucial in helping us hold our own at atime of steadily rising costs.
All along we've known the frustrations of editing a magazine of
112 pages, in which from the beginning controversial issues havebeen aired, and in which we wanted to "encourage dialogue among
women across all assumed/existing boundaries." We have always felt
the sense of time-lag, impatience, and the choices needing to bemade between new work and responses to work already published.
We've sat together late at night after counting characters in every
piece of writing for a forthcoming issue, trying to decide how ourlimited space could be apportioned, what could go into anotherissue. Our contributors have sometimes and justifiably grown impatient, but we have been impatient too.
Publishing SW has been an extremely labor-intensive process.
We could not reorganize the distribution system, or do extensive
fund-raising, given my physical limits especially, and still do thework we wanted to do as editors-not just soliciting and .selecting
material, but working with contributors and also corresponding
about work we didn't publish. A computer terminal and hardware
would have vastly simplified our mailing system and record-keeping.
4/Opening the magazine to a collective would have reduced the number of woman-hours for each of us. However, we believe that SW
has a long future, and that the new editors will make new decisions
based on their own skills and visions. The two women to whom we
now hand on the magazine are well equipped to carry her on. Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz and Michaele U ccella are long-time activists,organizers, teachers and creators of possibility for women. Bothhave contributed to SWin the past. We feel confident that she will
thrive in their hands.
I sense, from many pieces of correspondence that SW has received, that the last few years have peen a period of deepening andexpanding politics for many North American lesbians. Fear andanger about "fragmentation" in the women's movement-as if a developing political consciousness could or should possess instantunity-can be seen giving way to a thoughtful rejection of false unity,a reclamation of difference as a source of deeper insight rather thanas mere in-fighting: recognition of our class, ethnic, racial and otherhistorical perspectives within our identities as women. Living in anation increasingly bent on the destruction of its citizens and of alllife everywhere, it feels increasingly that personal survival by itself
is not survival. What do we mean by liberation? On whose liberation does our own depend? Pinned between the urgency of nuclear
danger and the need to build for a long future, much is asked of allof us who care.

5Michelle Cliff

Notes for a Magazine
1 have learned a lot while working on Sinister Wisdom over the past
few years - about myself and about the magazine. For the most partit has been a good experience, although a complicated one. About
myself! have learned that 1 have an affinity for numbers - and get arush when 1 balance the checkbook or ledger the first time around.
(I must mention here that Linda Shear, superb accountant and composer and musician, helped and supported us through the process
oflearning bookkeeping and set up a sensible and clear system of financial management for the magazine.)
1 have also learned that even after going to the SW mailbox approximately 800 times over the past three years-and getting hit by
a car once en route-I still get excited by what might be waiting for
us in the box. We have been given wonderful surprises through thatmailbox: the work of women whose names we did not know (likeMary Moran, Ursula Kavanagh, Celeste Tibbets, Diana Bickston,Sudie Rakusin); donations from women to help cover free subscriptions, printing costs; notes on renewal forms telling us we were doinga good job; and letters from women in prison-sometimes telling us
about having seen a copy sent to another woman, but the prison has
a rule against "sharing," so could we send another subscription. Since
we announced with issue 17 that SW would be available free of charge
to women in prisons and mental institutions, we have received approximately 300 requests from women in prison. But we have neverreceived a request from a woman in a mental institution; and 1 wonder about our sisters in those places and what we must do to reachthem. (I would urge those of you who are concerned about womenin prisons and mental institutions to support No More Cages, a publication which is devoted to ending the oppression of sisters in thoseplaces, and which consistently reports the active opposition by womenin those institutions, to those institutions. Subscriptions are $6 per
year; send to: Women Free Women in Prison, P.O. Box 90, Brooklyn, NY 11215.)
6

What else have I learned? That the bottom line is very powerful and that we must address the economics of this movement andhow we can survive. My first job out of college was as a researcher
at Life magazine (I was assigned to the "moon-landing"); later I wasa production editor in a publishing house in New York. I broughtfrom these jobs a certain practical experience to Sinister Wisdom, as
well as a Third WorldlBlackilesbian/feminist perspective. I alsobrought a fir~thand knowledge of the enormous amounts of capitalwith which white men are able to convey their view of the world, tothe world. As long as we exist under capitalism, what we are ableas Black women, Third World women, lesbians, feminists-to do
may well come down to capital, after all. A gloomy thought, but
one to consider. These are bad times, but have there ever been really
good times for enterprises that want to change the way in which theworld is viewed? Of course not.
We have certainly felt the limits imposed by not-enough-money.
So much so that when we were preparing this issue for the typesetter we had to cut some very fine work, work which we had alreadyaccepted, because we could not afford to include it in this issue. As
we have had to cut work from other issues as well. These were very
difficult decisions to make; and the fact that they had to be madesolely on the grounds of money was bitter indeed.
What can we do about this? I can only say that we need to continue to support women's enterprises that we believe in. I would.
recommend to women who are thinking of starting journals or newspapers or publishing houses, that you obtain non-profit, tax-exempt
status-there are free-of-charge lawyers for the arts in many states
who can help you do this. With this status, you will be eligible for
grants and tax-deductible donations. If you do not want to try for
non-profit, tax-exempt status, many states have umbrella organizations which will take you under their aegis - the Coordinating Council of Literary Magazines in New York is one such organization. I
would encourage women who are involved in printing, typesetting,retail, or manufacturing enterprises to incorporate and sell stock.
Above all, I would ask women who have it to give extra capital towomen's enterprises, or to invest it in these enterprises. Finally, weneed more institutions of our own making-more outlets for ourwords and thoughts, more battered women's shelters, soup kitchens7

for poor or unemployed women, food cooperatives, places to meetand organize - don't be afraid of starting them.
As I write this I think about the Marxist dialectic: thesis, antithesis, synthesis. Thesis = feminism/lesbian-feminismlbelief incollective empowerment; antithesis = a dependence on capitalist
modes to create a financial base which will underwrite a revolution;
synthesis = the revolution in which resources will be shared equallyand our various enterprises will be assured of survival. For me, theonly way to tr averse the antithesis is to keep sight of the synthesis;that is, we cannot believe that when women inhabit the space shuttleor the Supreme Court, any real advance has been made. This may
be obvious; but I want to say it anyway.
We must give of our time'and our money (those of us who have
it is always understood) to those institutions we care about, or else
this movement will become only a pastime for women who can afford it, and not something geared to make radical change in the livesof sisters everywhere.

I want to thank Harriet Desmoines (Ellenberger) and Catherine
Nicholson, who typeset and pasted up issues 17-21; Judith Pendletonof Annie Graham Co., who designed and typeset and pasted up
issues 22/23 and. 24; the Iowa City Women's Press, who printed
issues 20-24; and A Fine Bind, who bound issuc;s 20-24. These are
all women's enterprises, lesbian/feminist enterprises, without which
publishing Sinister Wisdom would not have been the positive experience it was.

8Michelle Parkerson

prologue # 1: Moving Day
Miss Tubman's train
knew no tracks
just a North Star shining
Freedom" . .. can't tote no boxes,
can't take no packs -"Miss Moses said,"Move on ..."
Through Southern summersof our discontent,
Freedom Riders shookthis land
Sojourner's Harvest moved
for justice
Never knew no turnin' backA woman makes her pathsome Angola mornings
over Mrican earth
no mercenaries fathomHer moving smooth:a trigger / a childstrapped taut beneathher breasts
Each dawn renews the promise:
Liberation
my father says
i move a lotafter packing 8th time
this year9over boxes,
this manmeets his daughter's eyes
andfinds a nomad
dancing
my roadJa fever
my feet pursue the undertow{

It's Moving Day:
chipped dishes, ragged books, and lost romancei've packed Miss Harriet's starlight,
snatched songs from Selma church nights,
taken birth from unmarked bush graves-on this moving day
I hold my powerby the handandlet it walk me home10

Joanna Russ

Main Street: 1953/
Who's Elaine Beach?
Just the one you'd expect. The shy one. The sandy-haired one
with freckles. The unhappy one who isn't good-looking. The one
who came back to town after a two weeks' absence, claiming she'dbeen to Chicago and had a baby. The one who's always listening tosomething else. The one who, on autumn nights, looks as though
she can hear something else. The one who hates parties. The one
who won't talk about it.
The one to whom supernatural adventures ought to happen.
In a car, coming slowly home from the Christmas dance in a
blizzard, being driven by a boy she didn't like. The prairie stretchingiron-grey and iron-hard for miles. In her lavender-organdie dress,
sitting as far away from him as she can, in her fake-fur coat, in her
dyed lavender pumps, her short hair fluffed up in the cold, her fingers
drawing roses and daisies on the fog of the car window.
Didn't say anything.
At a cross-roads, got out of the car and ran away. The snow sothick she could hardly see the Stop sign. A great, blowing white.
She's in it, stumbling across the iron-hard furrows of the field. Nature lies dead. Into a small fringe of trees standing alone on theprairie, she's dreamlike and hurting. Numb feet, snow blowing up
the sleeves and down the neck of her coat, stinging pellets hitting
her face and blowing in whirls and spirals past the dim dead branches.
The trees don't stop.
Somewhere, lost among the confusion of dead twigs and piled
frozen rubbish is the place where the shape changes. Or somethingchanges: the murmuring in one's head, the outline of things, there's
an abstract difference, the dream as it wakes up. The sand picture.
And she does make it. Right into Broceliande. She's the same
but being the same doesn't make the world the same; that's the difference. She's erased. Sobbing with relief in her heavy coat under
the May-bloom, under the infinite milky light, delicate grey blossom
11

against delicate grey sky and the round moon rising, colored likethe inside of a peach. Broad, ivory-tinted rivers catch the first slashof pink light. To be able to walk farther and farther under the dropping trees, carelessly dragging her coat across daisies and fallen
May petals, her skin dewing, all around her the loud sound of thawingwater.
To be the same but to be perfect. Wandering in her stockingsfrom one pale creamy heap of flowers to another in the beginningsof dawn. To know it goes on forever. To know that nothing changes.
To know there is not time passing.
There's cloth of gold and cloth of silver. Architecture like glassor ice. Living on snow-water that turns to wine as the sun hits it.
Banners of all colors. The terrible, terrible temptation of spirit so
intense and fiery that forms can scarcely contain it: bilberries anddewberries and cupcakes of music, living on music, metal-foil music,
shapes of dazzling white, so sad and so gay. Music like cut glass.
Daggers of music that enter the soul, sharp and unhuman in thisforest of Broceliande that has barely five trees together but she madeit; she got into it anyway.
Even faces.
She came back.
She said she'd been to Chicago and had a baby but shut up if
anyone asked her about the details.
Got her old job back.
Stopped watching television except for the news, gets newspapers
from all the big cities now: Chicago, San Francisco, New York, Los
Angeles, Boston, Cincinnati.
Has taken down all the pictures in her furnished room and keeps
instead old rocks she found out on the prairie or in town, pebbles
ditto, old match-books, sticks and dried leaves, weeds, flowers, old
tin cans.
She hints at important "theories" about current events but won't
tell them.
Won't wear make-up, won't go out, won't buy new clothes,
won't get married (that's too much like You Know Where, she says,
at least the way they talk about it).
She says scornfully that she doesn't hear voices; that's just gossip.
12

She works well and quickly, filing things, and almost for nothing(in their back room) so they don't fire her.
She never goes to church now.
She says sometimes that she had a baby whose name was Elaine
Beach.
If you get thereIf you come backAngrily kicking holes in the clay of the train depot in spring, insummer intently measuring how far grasshoppers jump, with an
old tape measure she keeps always in the pocket of her shabby plaid
skirt; she says she'll never go back. Moving farther out on the prairie(but she won't ever get in a car), eating snow greedily in winter andlaughing, but never never ever going there again. That's final, shesays.
She didn't come back to a long illness or to old age or some family
tragedy, nothing bad.
But from Broceliande? .

13

Jean Swallow

Cognate1. Where did you come from?
l.
I fell from a cold sky
plummeted intQ a field of winterwheat and stood still
upright,bones shattered to the hip.

Brittled bones from years
of not knowing if
there was to be a time
when my memories would make sense,
when the earth could receive my screams,
roll me between the sun and herself
and let me heal.
2.
Well, none of us are from here.
Nebraska, Mississippi, the Carolinas:
not a memory but
a fragrant taste just at the tip
a sign sweeping through us
and lying in wait
inside.
Listen, where I come fromthe honeysuckle wraps herself
through the windows in asweat-tossed tanglecaressing the small of your backtouching each soft hair
when you lie down naked, waiting
for the summer rain.
14

Where I come fromit rains every evening
to cool us andto bathe and feed the green.
After, the air
tastes fresh made.
The greenness is thick and dancing
day lilies splash and float in orange
and ribbon the roads like candy.
I don't know if
Carolina is still like this.
I'm not sure she was ever like this.
But I wish I could go home.
It feels like the achewhere a lover's hand used to rest,
it feels like your parents' house,
when you are grown.
The dream of home
so urgent
like most lies, with a truth inside
like sugar on the bottom of iced tea,never mixed, never to be mixed
like sugar, like alcohol
the body remembers
the dreams start a craving
hungry, hungry
I could starve for the want of it
for the need15

for the dream to be true.
But it never was.

3.
Margaret said she walked out ofMississippi with Meredith
walked to Montgomery
in 98° heat.
The white folks along the way
turned off all the water
there was no waterfor fifteen miles they marchedaround to the courthouseand the young white boy
standing sentry there
his rifle ready, his uniform new
spat in Margaret's face
and then whispered
goddamn white nigger.
She was evicted from her homethey all knew where she had been
just as they knew who among themhad killed Till and who would be silent
she wouldn't get out
but she couldn't move just thenshe was in the hospitalfor a week, dehydration,
no waterit didn't rain for themthat day.
Would you go home, Margaret, I asked.
Well~ there was nothing for me there. haven't been back since
she talks slowly now.
I'm sort of a coward you know.

16But I don't believe this.
I don't believe we are cowards
to leave when
for whatever reason they need
they would choke us if we stayed.
It's only the dream that chokes us now.

II. Where you going?
1.
Don't drink around me, I said.
It's okay for you, Marian said,
you have your lover here, but I'm
new, I need to meet people
I want to be aroundother lesbians she said to me holding
her hands as she cried.
I know this one
I have been in the dyke
bar myself in tears
just wanting to be safewith other queers
wanting not to-have to be
anything but what I was, am
queer
but they wanted
I wanted
me to drink too.
Where else can we go,
she asked me.
I'm lonely.

17

I

2.
Whenever we could
we would go driving.
I would drive, Cindy would work
the radio, feed us berries
open the wineor pour the whiskey.
The soft warm air
reached underneath my hair and 'cooled my wet skin.
We laughed and talked;
it was always easier to talkwhen we didn't have to look at each other.
She was the most beautiful woman
I had ever seen.
Crystal glasses of burgundytranslucent, dark and shimmeringin the sunlight;
sometimes we took it with us
walking, drifting through thefallen leaves in a tobacco town.
The sun streamed in her
round kitchen window when we went backto get more.
It seemed to me thenwe might never have to move
I felt so happy, so safe
so loved, I thought
the alcohol was buying me time
stopped time
stopped me from rememberingthat I wasn't homethat I wasn't safe that
I was a lesbian.

18

3.
On certain days, the whiskey comes
whispering, remember how safe,
come with me, soft in my ears
sliding down to my throat,
Come With Metightening around my neck,
COME WITH ME.
I can still taste it.
The dragon tells me in wonder
alcohol travels in water
dissolves in a gulp and thensucked into each cell, hiding.
Only after six to eight months
can our bodies separate out
the last of the poisonand push it out.
But I can still taste it.
It has been almost a year.
My body remembers lies.
It's a shell gamewhat's real, who's notqueers aren't they said
but Cat says I know
we drank because we didn't stop.
I hold on to this lesson,
our lesson, n~t a birthrightbut clawed out of the air
with our fingernails, raw.
But this was private,
I thought, bleeding
I did not want to force
others, I do not want
to force any woman
but I will not watch.

19

I will not watch womenbetray themselves again
forthe want of a safe place.
I am learning how
to make other places to bewith women, I intend tokeep my clear vision I am making
my own sobriety whether I am
safe or not.
You don't think I can?
You just
watch me.

III. When are you leaving?
1.
Dragon and me left
in the center of summer
left Carolina for Mecca anddrove straight through to theother side of the country
and still found no home.
We drank whiskey and vodka
smoked reefer until we could notremember how we had been robbed
how we had left
been run out of our dreams,
our lesbian housesilent, each of us wondering
why we never had a chance
to fight, except with each other.
How astonished I have been
and grief-ridden for the ones lost20

Helen and 'Norand only fights with Cindy
for over a year bewildering
the other voices still whisper
can't you just relax
let it go have a good time
for once?
Mab says, go toward the fear
towards it and through it.
I think to myself
don't stop now, not now.
I can hold thisand not be confused.
I can dream my own dreams.

2.
And this is where I can start to fightknowing all of this at once
not either or.
I lift my head,see all the others:
Margaret, dragon, Mariansober now and fighting still
Cat on the farm, fighting, not alone
anq cognate, we know each otherrecognize each other's dreams, we know
it has not, will not, will not be easy
but we are not finished yet
this is where we start.

21

Marnie MahoneyLesbians Have Immortal Children-for Laura

The room was dark and softand filled up with the forms of sleepy people
where we watched each other cautiously,
passed the pipe and tried to figure- strange city during long time on the road if we could do it here,
beside four sleeping men,
if we could do it.
The first time I made love with a woman
there was something I had been very afraid of(what was it, then?) as we lay
all night, when we couldn't wait any more,
and finally turned to each other,but couldn't decide
where to put our arms ...
The first time, the first time except
for the dreams, except
for the long, careful fantasies I set myself
in clinical detail and with a pounding heart-could I think it?
then I could do it.

22This is the same bodythat lay with you that nightin a corner seat on the bus here
dreaming now of us after you've left me:
you in some new adventure,some other woman,and me starving but strong.
It's the same one, all right,
now fat, now thin, now tired,older now.
I'd hardly know it-the same bodyas my baggy blue jean naked crash pad
body was then,wrapped up in stockings and sandals with heels,
delivering myself to the door of the office,picking myself up at five,eyes almost open to faces
I almost know and then forget
who blink between the bus windows ...
It's a long ride home
to nakedness and a doubtful telephonethat might or might not lead me
to your body still as maddening to the fingertip,
as tender to the mouth,
that's grown a little tougher
but hasn't changed a bit,that holds a heart I barely know
- and I want to wait for me but doesn't wait,that maybe would turn over on the couch,hold out that same arm and take me to you
and really what we began thenwhether or not we control it
if it grows with us
one way or the otherit lives.

23

Patricia Fagan

Daydreams on a Subway Train
Draw me,a hibiscus, sweet darling,
make it red and opened.
draw me the flamboyant in blossom;
the palms tall and grand.
draw me the old black woman selling tarts andsoursops on her head.
I need to see ole Mrs. Proudfoot on her donkey;
we used to say hello every morning.
draw me the hands of the steel drum player
their roughness banging out calypso.
draw me old Mr. Pete, beads of sweat run down his
black face as he takes his cows to pasture.
And how about the time we got caught teefing fruit,
lord, those soursops were sweet. And
don't forget Rafie, the town drunk, drinking rum
and throwing the empties at the
tourists while cursing.
draw me the black women squatting, as they fry fishon their coal pots.
draw me home;
I can walk barefoot up the hill, see the morning
sun and forget this subway train.

24

Minnie Bruce Pratt

Reading Maps
for Elly

Yesterday Nettie in my office talked about summer
school, her geography course, how before she hadn't
really known where she was, whether she went
east or south to get to the beach, didn't know
how to read a map, Ezra always did that.
She said, I never had any need to reada map, every place I go it's already charted.
I drive to work down the boulevard. The way
does not lead through trees, no dark crossed limbs
sprouting green flesh. Over my heada grey net hangs, suspended, lines
from Duke Power wired from pole to pole.
I have learned what to expect at every turn.
The morning headlines again have read WOMANKILLED: wild chase across town, her car
forced off the road by a truck, her husband,a sergeant from the army base, with a rifle. She ran
into the woods. He followed and shot her in the head,walked back to his pickup, drove away.
-I want to drive away from this town. At my backto the north men fall from the sky. Parachutes
burst open like nylon morning glories.
In the webbing men jerk at lines to float
closer to their targets. If I had an M-16
I could go shoot them down.

25

To my left
the Putt-Putt course is open. On zig-zagsof green indoor-outdoor carpet, young men
demonstrate their skill to girlfriends: how to hita small ball into a hole curbed by painted brick.
I think of my lovers who have been raped. I could castrateeach man with his club.

On my right, womenshop at the Winn-Dixie between walls of stacked cans.
G.!. wives stand in the cash register linewith ladies from Lakeshore Drive who will not speak.
If I drove the car through the window they would
speak) open mouths) stare at nothingleft of the plate glass but a corner of webbed cracks.
Two miles ahead, at the corner where the boulevard runs
into Hay Street, is a church, empty now. With spare gas
in a jug, rags) I could roll a ball offire
under the porch. Tomorrow there might be no pulpit, no door for

women to enter, to turn down the aisle
toward narrow pew.
But at that corner other women
still walk for a living, down where I have sat stopped
at a red light, seen a woman step to the double
yellow line, straighten the black seam of a stocking)pull her skirt, purple silk parachute, up
over her head. I thought she hid in her handa grenade) ready to blow up the man and herself.

Then the light changed; the street looked the same.
I will not drive downtown today. I am afraid
there has been no change, that my anger and despair
may ignite like a mass of oiled r~gs. I mightwalk into an intersection and burst into flames.

26

I turn left after A & H Cleaners,
rebuilt from the bombing five years back,first business owned by a black man on the avenue.
Behind the red sign, gold letters, promisesof one-hour service, black women press
knife-sharp creases into army fatigues.
White men I-despise already have been here with fire.
I see their image in my rear-view mirror,

see my own burning, the will to violence.
I want us all to change; yet I drive to work
the same way every morning, doors locked,
windows rolled up, afraid. I want to roll my anger
like a tank over terrain I do not control.

I forget that I have resisted, that I have imagined
how to travel a different way.
I turn left
at Filter Plant Road, past the telephone polewith kudzu snaking green up its guy wires.
When I get to work, the papers on my desk lie
ruled by thin blue lines, scrawled overwith tendrils of pencil and ink: I had to get this job
to leave my husband. For weeks I could not think
what to put in the white spaces on the application blank,years of never knowing where I was,27

years of marriage when he drove and I tried
to read the map, to see my body in relation
to the space around me, to find it on the diagram:
green boundaries for grassland, forest, parks,
yellow f~r cities, red for Indian reservation
or mili~ary base, red lines for scenic routes,
grey for time zones. I had no belief
that I could get myself from here to there.
I would say left for right until at some intersection in Colorado or Georgia he would reachover and take the map. I did not try
to take it back. I did not know I was angry
until I began to talk to other women, get directions
from them on how to meet. They called me: voices traveledover the phone, spiraled into the labyrinth, my inner ear
that sat like a snail, listening. They repeatedturns and streets. I wrote their words down,then propped the sheet of paper on the seat beside me
as I drove,
once for hours on Bragg Boulevard
to find Johnson Road by the cleaners in Bonnie Doone.
At a red light I stopped short of a car load of men:paratroopers out on the town could slash lines
finer than wrinkles on a woman's face, or fasten
her genitals with copper wire to their battery. I had
to locate women friends.
I began to guessat turns. Landmarks blurred, perhaps rememberedby my guide in a different pattern, perhaps not clearly seenby me in the rain, yellow light from massage parlors
streaking the windshield. I slowed down to readmy map under moving streetlights. I was determined
to find the house where women met to tellour secrets, pieces oflife torn out, hidden,
or almost thrown away. If I could find them,
they might show me the way out.
28

That night
I refused to be lost and got to Denise's apartment.
The words on my scrap of paper matched the addresson the door: Grand Prix Drive, 2105-G.
Inside six women sat in a maze of chrome and plexiglass.
They looked like me; I didn't trust them.
As we talked, the windows rattled: not thunder but artillery.
The woman across from me looked directly at me;
blue shadows painted around her eyes did not hide
her glance; her jaw tensed under its camouflage of rouge.
She opened her mouth and began to speak.
The room shifted around me to other places
as we hunted our fragments scattered on the scorched earth,
men's land, as we gathered the bones of memory:
how her mother forgot the five years before electroshock,
how she moved out and her boyfriend burned
her clothes and books in the front yard, how the rapist
held a lighter to her hair, how my husband chopped
up the kitchen chairs with an axe and burned them.

I saw the ashes in the back yard when I got home,what was left of three red chairs; I was glad
it wasn't the remains of me and the children.

In the narrow kitchen I told him I did not want
the place he gave me in the world as it was.
He spoke of change, of going from here to therewith me. I did not want to leave him behind;
I did not want to be in the same room when he spokewith the mouth I had loved for nine years, with the voice
I had hated when it cracked like bones breaking from anger.
He was the same man who shared two small boys, the laundry,
dishes, the man who smashed a bowl on the counter
beside me, left a fist of blue fragments on red tile,
the man who leaned with me against the yellow walland cried, his tears streaking my cheek, the same man,smiling in a three-piece suit, who asked
about the revolution while I fixed a mimeograph machineon the kitchen table29

I wanted to slash his facewith the bread knzfe. I did not raise my voice.
My hand kept on turning the crank. Sheetsof cheap paper stared up from the floor, lines
slightly blurred, stubborn, black as charcoal:"Marriage Equality Act 1976, ""Joanne Little Acquitted," "New book:
Mama Doesn't Live Here Any More," "Lesbian
film: Jan Oxenberg's Home Movie."

When I finally yelled and he shoved me against the stove,out the door, it was like any of our drives together,like sex: one minute I was in my own body, the next,
outside myself, displaced, while he took control.
After I hit the floor of the back porch, I saw
my family at the far end of the kitchen, looking
at me as if! were at the wrong end of a telescope,
he rigid as a granite marker at a boundary,
the children crying, flesh of my flesh, their faces
not yet hardened, looking at me flat on my backin the geography of power. I felt the grab of his hands on
my arm, the hands that had rubbed my aching back.
The porch cement was cool under my bleeding arm;
I thought I might just lie there on the quiet slab.
I could smell the back yard, the dusty smellof sasanquas, the rotting leaves gone to earth,smell of the memory: all living thingschange themselves. He could be different,
but he wasn't. I would be.
I got to my feet. Behind me the back steps
led into the night, into terror and unknown ventures.

30

I moved out when, fingers sweated around ·a ball-point pen, I made myself realenough on paper to get this job and leave them.
Now I live alone just off the boulevard.
Early in the morning I watch the shadow of pineneedles brush fine lines over my bedroom wall.
I wonder about my charred and smoking heart:
what grows in a burned-over forest. Sometimes I sleep
with a lover, my bed an island in the water of night.
With my hand between her breasts, near her heart,
I dream of a place green, flourishing, where welive safe. At meetings I look for women

who look at me. Our glances catch, like the windand seed poised in the open milkweed pod.
Tonight as I leave work, as streetlights arc
pink over the boulevard, I hardly remember the dream.
The evening headlines read WOMAN'S CHARRED
BODY SHOVED INSIDE INCINERATOR. I pass a white woman
driving a Continental, a black woman in the backseat.
I meet my neighbor Sheila on her way to third shift.
To feed herself and three children she delivers
pizza, can pass between barracks lined up like tanks,balance herself between rows of soldiers saying
Baby come on and Don't talk that way to a lady.
She's never liked the way the place is laid out
but she knows how to get around. But I want to go
outside this landscape, drive right off the map.

I don't know the next turn. The street
looks the same as any other day I wanted to change it,on my right, the cement block building marked
topless, stenciled with naked women. A man
in khaki enters; in ten years, he may turnand show me the face of one of my sons.
And what will I do then? What then, what now?

31

except resist: resist the need to destroy
that spreads anger and despair heavy as asphalt
through my veins, makes me a road driven over by violence,
makes me a map of someone else's world.
I will remember that I have learned to travelin a different way.
Five years ago I was afraid
to cross town; tonight I drive down the boulevard
to a room where snakeplants grow from the wall,
where I eat green-fleshed avocado, and I talkto women who sketch quick lines over the paper
ridges of a napkin. Our faces have begun to wrinkle,
our eyes are webbed in lines. We trace the anger
flying through our bodies back to its point of origin.
We locate forbidden places, the kind marked dangerous
swamp, unknown territory on the old charts.
We plot change. We love one another.
Our bodies become lodestones to the future. We imagine
a place not marked yet on any map. Between us
words tremble and veer, like the iron needleof a compass, a guide to what we are making real.

32

Cheiron Sariko McMahill

I Ching
To KatEight years together within the"confines of Seattle's Asian ghetto;
from the perspective of childhood, our lives were of the same limits
and potential. As ragged tomboys, we shared the impulse to escape.
First designing spaceships, then dreaming of Red China; whenother girls wore make-up, we wore Mao caps. You often complained
to me in the secrecy of pidgin Chinese (gleaned from your father)about the rudeness of some White or another. But it was always
clear your words did not indict me, but rather invited me to share inyour experience of pain. And anyway, I didn't see myself reflectedin the occasional White face. At least on the inside, I was woven
into the living Yellow web that stretched from Chinatown to Beacon
Hill, down to the dirty shores of Rainier Beach. You and I werebound together, apart from the White Outside, in our mutual feeling of displacement: like a throwing of the I Ching, a moment's
chance had decided the shared circumference of our lives.
Within the reaches of that community we staked out the domainof our friendship. Taking its larger form as an outline, we gave
time our own personal texture; traditions evolved out of all the time
we spent waiting for some change. Sitting at your kitchen table, we
let our imaginations fly. I can still feel the afternoon shadows growaround us as we talked, sauces from last night's dinner filling the air
with their mysterious and comforting smells. Around six yourmother would drag home from a long day's work, greeting you in a
Japanese you could only answer with English. I would stay until
your sister turned on the burners and began to wield her long cooking chopsticks.
Later, at night, we might slip away from both our households,
dropping in at some "hot spot" like the dances in the Buddhist Church
gym. If we did go dancing, we insisted on taking center floor - together. With our jerky, monster-like movements, we took our imitations of the boys around us to ever new heights of satire. Only thepain of too much laughter could force us to drop our game.
33But at the center of all our times was the Seward Park Loop,
where we ran for miles unconcerned with family, friends, or school.
Bursting away from the taunting whistles of young men polishing
their cars, we felt the forest wind cool our sweat as we kept pace witheach other. You would move along effortlessly on your strong, athletic legs, while I remember how I would always finish out of breath.
Sometimes speaking, often silent, we looked out across Lake Washington's stretch-of blue, the pine trees leaning out over the water,
the seagulls turning and coasting in the sky.
Even in school we managed to have some fun, though mostly
we aimed only for endurance. With its poor administration, lack offunds, and class and racial tensions, our education consisted of little
academics and a lot oflearning how to get along with our frequently
bitter, angry classmates. Uniformed guards stood ready to break up
major battles, but when I was punched or called names in class I
could only hope to make it to the bathroom before I started to cry.
Then I'd eagerly wait 'til Japanese class to tell you all about it-you
said to hit them back, and you were right, but I couldn't bring myself
to do it.
Was that when I began to push harder against the frustrationthat was tightening around me? When the name-calling became
more threatening and the cliques that would always exclude me began to form? By chance someone told my mom about a private
school. I applied and won a scholarship. Even then, still barely
sensing the possible results of my choice, I felt my old ways snap
within me like so many yarrow sticks. Like the yarrow sticks weused to tell the fortunes of our lives; miraculous but terrifying, it
seemed I had outwitted a long foretold destiny. Or perhaps for me
the sticks could be thrown twice.
With difficulty, but in time, I adapted to the new school environment. But you were still like a tree bending over to touch me,
your branches connecting me to my neighborhood and my past.
During the morning commute I prepared one attitude for my White,
wealthy classmates; during the ride home I got ready for volleyballpractice with you. You cal,lght me up on the gossip, the new songs
and the slang, and we planned trips to Hawaii we both knew we'd
never be able to afford. I don't know exactly when I realized I couldn't
split myselfin two that way forever. But I remember how you sobbed
one night, filled with a sudden self-hatred, after I had persuaded34

you to come to a party of my new schoolmates. You hadn't spoken
the whole evening, and helplessly I resolved never to ask you toshare that part of my life again.
I also know that at some point I found myself testing the watersof a White river; a strong current that was "going places," murmuring to me of a fate more powerful than I had ever dreamed. Voicesof teachers and counselor;i echoed with my importance to society!
the nation! the world! While at our neighborhood high school, theyurged you all to be practical: "Look into vocational training."
I gave up our trip to the moon, but I went East for college; I
never stood with you in the Great Hall of the People, but alone I
saw the Seine. While you hung ever tighter onto the lifelines of acommunity that had closed soundlessly around my absence. As if it
had known all along I would be leaving, while you would not.
For so long though, we did not seem fated to this separation.
When we would draw up plans for our circular house on Mars, ahouse of true interdependence where ours and our friends' rooms
would converge on the same courtyard. I wish we had believed we
could build that house right here on Earth - maybe then we would
have escaped our limitations together.
As it is, I freed part, but not all of myself. Part of me is stillwith you, though I can look at that part of me now only from theoutside. I want to forget about it, leave it behind, but the pull of
you and what you mean to me still divides me. I fantasize about
coming back as a teacher or a social worker, but know that role would
not be honest: because it's also me I must return to heal and you I
come to ask for help.
The last time I came to visit, we went out for our ritual of Dim
Sum lunch. But you were inaccessible to me in your silence. We
have yet to become the once-possible: destinies crossing the same
center. I want to remember with you how we once imagined it
could be.

3S

Sherry Sylvester

Class Acts: Shooting Script of aPoor White Experience"What you feel has a lot to do with your economics."~- Rita Mae Brown

Ready camera one
I've been noticing myself
sitting on the couch at one in the morning
saying what I didn't say
all day
I've been noticing myself
sayingwhat I didn't say
scene twocamera pans crowded suburban movie housemany viewers are crying
I am watching a movie
where a 16 year old kid
gets 400 dollars a month for therapy
and is living in a huge house
where all the plates matchand nobody mentions money
not once in two hours
I am watching the ending
and hearing a friend saythat these areordinary people

36scene three
impromptu on the street
well, one of the reasons that I have money is that I keep tabs on it
CUT
you know they've made a study and if you took all the money in theworld
and divided it equally
CUT
the same people who have it now would get it again
CUT
STOCK FOOTAGE OF NEWSPAPERS ROLLING OFF PRESSES
Willamette Week lauds Labor Players for presenting working classcharacters who are literate and articulate

women who think like men
blacks who act like whites
mexicans with perfect english
gays who aren't blatant
Camera pans kitchen washed in white light, coke cans on table withhalf empty loaf of wonderbread. A large, 21 inch, imitation color
t.v. is on in the next room. Speaking from the screen, a sympathetic
character seated on something soft:
Actually, I understand exactly what you mean. My grandfather, on
my mother's side, he was working class. I get most of my values
from him. Like saving money. I get so afraid if! don't havemoney in the bank.

37

scene SLX
I am at a party
40 dykes drinking apple juice
talking about comfrey
she puts her hand gently on my solar plexus
which according to her radiates a green aura
then she says ~you are too articulate
to be working classframe freeze fade to red
a bicentennial-like minutethe middle class is the buffer between the ruling class and theworkers. From the middle class.we get schizophrenia, literary
criticism and television diction. Psychotherapy was invented by
and for the middle class. No group is more homogenized than the
middle class.
Workers build everything, produce everything, pick all the food andwash all the dishes. No group is more diversified than the working
class.
The middle class talks for a living and feels reverent about thekilling of oneself.
The working class learns not to talk back and are much more likely tokill one another. In fact, John Burlington, Burlington railroad,said I can hire half the working class to kill the other half.
Camera moves in slowly on panel discussion already underway
if you work hard and get an educ'ation you will succeed. If you do
not succeed, you are not working hard enough, or yo~ have squandered
your money.

38

The Left speaks: if you are white and you work hard and get an
education you will succeed. If you do not succeed, you are notworking hard enough or you have squandered your money. You
should not care if you succeed as long as you have a good stereo.
The Women's Movement speaks: The lives of poor women are too
terrible to imagine. We must get Virginia Woolf in paperback.
The Voice from the otherside: Poor people have chosen their poor
karma before they were born. It upsets their psychic to listen tothem.
The middle class speaks: Everyone has problems. Of course, somepeople have more money than others, but that just means they havea different set of problems. I was miserable because I had braces
at boarding school, I was lonely in Europe and I never made friends
at Vassar.
VOICE OVER
Middle class people consistently deny that any other experience ismore than superficially different from their own.
Closing scene:
I am at center stage saying what I didn't say
don't tell me that I overreact
don't tell me how you're working class 'cause you have a waitress
job when you also have a law degree
don't explain to me how it's cheaper to buy than to rentand don't tell me you're broke when you're forced to live on
your savings

39and never assume
that we think alikenever assume
we see the world alikenever assume
that we are alike

FREEZE FRAME UNDER ROLLING CREDITS
the reviews call it tacky. they call it overstatement. they go
on for four paragraphs without once mentioning the content.
the middle class talks for a living
and denies that any experience is more than superficially different
than its own.

40

Sue Dove Gambill
Rachel de Vries

Rediscovering the Heart
This article initially grew out of "playing trailer." The two of us were
getting together once a week to watch tv, hang out, eat junk foodsomething we really enjoy because it reminds us so much of ourfamilies.

Rachel: When we first thought about writing an article on class, ourimpulse was to figure out the angle from which we'd approach that
big issue. Then, we assumed, we'd grapple with the "idea," and "assign" each other particular elements about which we'd each write.
What happened was much more organic, much closer to the sources
we both come from. In one of our initial discussions, we realizedthat the real material was in the ease of our conversations, an ease
we both felt distanced from when we attempted to write. We began
taping our talks, and amid the laughter, the sounds of eating and thetelephone and unexpected visitors, we did in fact re-discover ourhearts, our true language, our own idiom that is clearly working-classin origin: the merging of emotion and intelligence, the closeness tothe heart that precipitates the clearest thinking.
This is a beginning point: We have not attempted a review of
all the writing that exists about class, nor have we tried to view theidea of class through any lens but our own understanding. What wehave done, and will continue to do, is explore the ways we understand the machinations of class in our lives, as two white women ofworking-class origins, educated away from our families and our natural voices, and begin to tow the lines back in, back where they belong, to the heart of the matter, to the re-discovery of the passionthat pushes us toward understanding.
Dove: It's fascinating with this working-class stuff-my consciousness is starting to peel back layers and there's parts where I know I*Transcribing and editing by Sue Dove Gambill
41

can't leap yet. I start to grasp something and it goes away. I'm starting to understand, but I'm not quite there yet.
Rachel: You know when you started? I know exactly when you
started because I knew then where I was. With you I feel like being
working-class is a real basis for our friendship. I don't quite know
why. It surprises me that you and I have so much in common because you're not ethnic and you're from the Midwest, so I would
think you wouldn't have any idea about "anything" because most of
the women who look like you are not working-class. It's like I broughta bunch of stereotypes about white women who said they were working-class who really weren't.
Dove: I know what you mean because I feel that on the inside. I remember driving down to the Women in Print Conference and you
and Alet1cia saying, "Oh, you're not like a typical WASP," and I remember feeling, that's right. But I needed someone else to tell me
because I don't know many people like myself.
Rachel: So, you said in class one day last year, "How did I escape?
How did I come away from that life?" And since then you and I have
had a lot of conversations .about that. But I realized I had passed
that point because I knew the answer to that in some way.
Dove: I'm still trying to learn what that is.
Rachel: I think that's where you started to question being workingclass from an emotional place as opposed to a rhetorical place. Not
that your heart wasn't in it before, but that you began to learn a different language, like the emotional truth all by itself, not made more
comfortable by an understanding with words like class structure.
Dove: That's like what Barbara and Beverly Smith were saying inthis interview I was reading where they talk about class and race,that we need to understand it from the heart sense instead of thetheory.*Rachel: That's when it seemed to me that you began to change. You
used to talk so much about your background. You'd give that little
working-class introduction to yourself over and over again. It's almost as though you had to hear it and then suddenly it hit yourheart. It must have been what you' needed to do ... you know, keep
on claiming it with words.
* "Across the Kitchen Table," Barbara and Beverly Smith, This Bridge Called My
Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color, ed. Cherrie Moraga and Gloria Anzaldua.

42

Dove: And there's still so much there. I know writing this essay
maybe will bring it together because still this morning I feel like I'mjust starting to get some understanding, for example, around thatwhole issue of escape. Sometimes I feel like there are two worlds in
my life but that I've escaped from one of them, or that I'm trying toescape from the narrowness and prejudice. But still there is a big
part of me that is connected there, that needs that connection. My
family gives me what people from other backgrounds can't give me.
Dove: This morning my Mom called and I said, "Mom, Sinister
Wisdom asked me to write an article and I want you to know that's
important to me." I had to explain it to her but still she didn't reallyknow. But she said, "I'm really glad." You know, she is glad.
Rachel: But she doesn't know for what.
Dove: Right. So, now I'm starting to understand that, but still
there's a part of me that feels like I've escaped.
Rachel: What we've escaped from, it seems to me, is the patriarchal
value system, but sometimes we confuse it with having deserted thefamily.
Dove: And when I say I've escaped it's like being judgmental, likesaying my life is beter. For me it is better, it's what I want. But I
need to understand how I've had more opportunities than my Mom.
Once I did an interview with her and I asked, "Did you ever want tobe something you didn't become?" She said, "I always wanted to bean airline stewardess so I could see the world." And why didn't she?
Because she was the oldest girl in a family of seven; she married intoa family 'cause my father already had a kid, and she raised her own
family of five kids, and now she's raising two grandchildren. Someone could look at that and say, well, she could have not gotten married. But I'm not sure. There probably wasn't even any way for her
to know how to be an airline stewardess.
Rachel: What we do in these conversations is like what's happening

in my novel. What I like so much about my novel is that I've foundthat voice, that working-class voice. When I write poetry it's such a
different language to me, it's a language all by itself, but when I
would write fiction I was always trying to write like someone I wasnot, the "educated person."43

Dove: It was a different language.
Rachel: Yeah, I was trying to write the way I thought an educatedperson would write fiction as opposed to writing in my own natural
voice and when I started writing the novel what I found was myown voice. That probably helped me in going down to see my family this last time because I'd started the novel beforehand so that I
was already, in some way, remembering my own idiom.
So, when I write the novel I can come back to the world where I
spend most of my time now, which is not a working-class Italianworld. But when I'm down there in Florida it's like I don't have
that, I can't find that person Rachel because nobody knows her
there. I become Marilyn who is their working-class daughter. Sometimes I have things I want to talk about and I can't talk about in that
idiom anymore. This is how I start to realize it: My mother says tome, "Sometimes I go to bed and I just lay there and I think, what
have I done?" She has no need to step beyond and do that psychological jargon. Like you or I or somebody who speaks in that jargon might say if we're depressed and couldn't go to sleep, "I'm really
re-evaluating the place my life is in. Sometimes I question if this is
the right space for me to be in and I don't know if I feel comfortablein what I'm doing or if I should make some changes and I'm trying
to process that and deal with all that." That's the way middle-classpeople talk and we're around that. What I'm saying is that in mymother's language she talks simply from the emotion she feels. But
the other way, the way with jargon, all that extra language is used toobjectify the emotion, control it; it reinforces emotional distancing.
And both statements say the same thing; one is just more honest
and finally more responsible.
When I'm at my parents' it's difficult for me to verify that thisperson that I am (Rachel) also exists. Like now I can be Marilyn in
Rachel, but I can't be Rachel in Marilyn. For example, as we're sitting here talking I feel like if I could get into my Italian, that's what
I call that Marilyn person, I could be very comfortable speaking inthat idiom and making jokes from that place of a sense of humor,
which is very different. That's a way I use Marilyn all the time inthis life. My sense of humor is in Marilyn Rappise, and the articulation and integration of that sense of humor is in Rachel de Vries.
So that way I can use my Italian part here in my life as a writer anda teacher and a person with an education. But when I go back to

44

Florida to see my family there's no way I can find to use Rachel because they don't know her. Rachel is a person that even Marilyn
doesn't know at all. I mean in Marilyn's mind there's no such thingas Rachel.

Dove: D. came over one morning and we were talking. It was sogreat, and I thought how I don't often get to hang out with workingclass women and talk like this about our lives. So, D. was talking
and I was feeling really good about it. Then she said, "I was terrified
to come here. On the ride I was getting more and more angry." AndI said, "Why?" And she said, "Because it's such a rich town." And I
looked at her. It surprised me. I mean there are rich people here
and that might make me uncomfortable sometimes, like when I was
cleaning one of those big houses on the lake and hating it. But also
I know how important the lesbian community here is to me. Then
I began to see some differences between D. and 1. She isn't collegeeducated and I started to think how much being part of college,
which is a middle-class institution, has given me this sort of adaptability, a certain kind of mobility in different situations. It's literally
knowing how to speak another way, a middle-class way. Sometimes
that can be good, sometimes it makes me too accepting, or too compromising; other times I realize that my mobility is not as far-reachingas I might have thought. Like after working in the university for acouple of years I found the atmosphere of diplomacy very stifling to
my more direct and expressive way of being.
The important connection I feel with you, Rachel, is that you're
not only working-class but you're college-educated and that we'veboth chosen art as our life. Both of us make bridges betweeri those
two worlds, what was our past and what we live now.
Dove: As I talk with more working-class women about our backgrounds I realize there are so many aspects of our lives that we needto take into account. We cannot just say we are working-class andthink that automatically means a similarity in our lives and an understanding. Such differences as educational opportunities, ethnicity,
race, religion, geographical region of birth and growing up, age,parents' employment, etc., have each to be explored in order to understand how our working-class lives are expressed differently, as
well as the similarities.

45

Another example is this woman, V., who was born near to where I
lived. She was born in West Virginia and I was born in eastern Kentucky. I couldn't wait to meet her, but when I did it shocked me because, see, she's a woman who lived in the mountains until she wasabout twenty. She is a mountain woman. I have certain things aboutme that are mountain, but I'm not them. So, I'm an Appalachianperson, but a city Appalachian because I moved out at about three
years old. Also, I really have made an enormous break with the culture in Cincinnati,~that Midwestern culture. Now it's not just that I
made a break, but I'm those different people in me, and I'm alsothat woman who lived in Portugal for two years. So where do I meetsomeone who is that same way? To me it's real exciting talking withyou, it's knowing college and having this certain exposure to theworld, certain experiences, it's what's different for us, but we know
the other world too. Exposure to me is an important word. Likewith your father, he didn't know to go and get that operation in his
hometown, he had to fly to another state 'cause he didn't know.
Rachel: It's like you saying you were always afraid people were going to ask you about classical music. I mean middle-class people, it
seems, are exposed to that in a kind of way.
Dove: And if they're not it's not embarrassing. Like the other night,
it was incredible for me to play Scrabble. My heart was on the edgeof fear the whole time, it really was. It was a big breakthrough forme 'cause the game always makes me feel stupid. And remember,
R. kept saying to me, "Oh, you want me to show you how to do it?"And I said, "No, don't. It's really scary for me to be doing this," andat a certain point you looked up across the table and I felt suchstrength from you sitting there because I knew you would knowwhat that meant. It's just like knowing ... I mean I don't know if
this is a common experience, I think it is, that in a working-class education you're taught that you're ignorant. This may be affected depending on if you're Catholic and went to a Catholic school or if
you're Jewish and education was put as important.
I remember once talking to this other friend of mine who is
working-class and we realized that our economic position was a little
different and also that she was Catholic and me a WASP, so anyway,
her family said definitely go to college and my family never did. Andeven now, when I went home the last time I was talking to my brotherabout my nieces, who are all real good in sports and I asked him, "So

46

you thinking about scholarships for the girls, you checking thatout for sports?" And I think he felt that he doesn't want them to go
to college. I wonder if they feel that college took me away from them.
College became the way where I talk different. So maybe he is scaredthat his kids wi11leave him like I left my family.
Rachel: Yeah, that's a big thing, especially 'cause it does do that.
Rachel: Where I think some people don't understand is that emo-

tional thing, emotional truth. I don't know how to talk about it
without making it sound judgmental. I don't mean that people areliars or something.
Dove: You mean being your most real self. As soon as a person
goes theoretical she has the possibility to step back and analyze. And
as long as we go to our minds and think what do we want to be orwhat do we wish for we're not at emotional truth because we're notliving the moment .....
Rachel: Got it.
Dove: As I'm typing this a part of me is saying, you better explain
how working-class language is more direct, active, immediate, while
middle-class language is more analytical, reflective, passive. At thesame time another part of me is saying, stop thinking so analytically!

Dove: And so you're not really at emotional truth, you're analyzing,
you're standing outside of yourself, looking at your reality and when
you're in the midst of emotional truth you are most who you are. It's
like that's where truth is. It's not that there's a lie, but you're notbeing reality.
Rachel: It's sort oflike ignorance.
Dove: Say what you mean.
Rachel: It's just like you're ignorant of the truth.
Dove: Because you're outside your body trying to figure out something.
Dove: It's like trying to write this article and how trying to write about
it is different than "playing trailer," different than living our lives.
It's like writing the article is middle-class, living is working-class and"playing trailer" is that in-between that we are! 'Cause we're doing it
but we have to call it something, we have to name it! I mean, a working-class person hanging out watching tv and munching out is notgoing to say they're "playing trailer."47

This morning I was starting to write and just say who I am - I say
I'm Appalachian, my father worked in this job, my mother worked
in that job, I did this, etc. I describe who I am as Suesie and who I
am as Dove, who I am in those two worlds. And as I describe it I
realized that I kept thinking there was a dichotomy, but I know there
are moments when I am just Dove and moments when I am just Suesie, but I'm also someone in between and that is where the latticework is, I mean, within my whole emotional dynamic between those
two worlds I've created my identity. That who I am is between
those two worlds. So I never escaped.
Rachel: And that you're figuring out the way to be able to be in bothworlds and speak the same language maybe?
Dove: Maybe I'm not even at that stage yet, but that I'm beginningto get insights into myself that will allow me to speak Dove into theworld of Suesie, into a language that my Mom can hear who I am
here. She can hear, she wants to hear and if! can only find the way
to speak. But I get angry, impatient; I get resentful of that otherworld.
Dove: I begin to realize that I am bi-lingual within the English lan-

guage, and that emotionally, psychically, physically and culturally I
am living the life of a second generation immigrant, of sorts.

And so I think about Barbara and Beverly Smith [and their interview
mentioned earlier]-they were able to help each other in the truth oftheir lives, which is really the concreteness, it's having your feet on
the ground - because they as Black women were able to talk aboutthat quality, that essence, that familiarity, and that is what I seek withother white working-class women.
This all feels so dense to me, there are just so many elements. I
know if I keep talking about it I'm going to make a leap of understanding. Now, I got those pictures of me. I have that one from the third
grade with me in the Brownie uniform and I look at it and I think,that little kid was me.
Rachel: Do you remember you then?
Dove: I remember back to kindergarten, like: When I was five years
old we lived in this housing project, it was two bedrooms and at one
point there was my two brothers and me and my Mom and Dad.
Then my other brother and his wife came and she stayed for six
months with a little baby.
48

Rachel: In this two-bedroom?
Dove: In this two-bedroom and my little sister was born and weall ~ived there. And I never remember that that was anything. It
just was. And I was thinking, where are the remembrances aboutclass? Was there things that I was feeling or did I just feel like everybody else 'cause everyone around me was the same and that was life?
But then I remembered I would go to this certain section where all
the garbage cans were, there were nine or ten garbage cans and I
would crawl in there and get between the garbage cans and there
would be this little space and I loved it, nobody else was around, it
was just me. That was my space, and so I was experiencing class,
you know?
Rachel: Yeah, because of the need for your own space.

Rachel: When you go to conferences don't you make the assumptionthat everybody .else is ...
Dove: Middle-class?
Rachel: No, not middle-class, but I always feel inferior because of
my background. That's part of what I have to work through to beable to write theory because I come from a non-academic backgroundor a non-middle-class background where education was not at allvalued. There was no push to that or to getting a better sense ofwhat was going on in the world. Until recently I would always think
I can't speak at these conferences because obviously all these people
know how to say things much better. Sometimes I have to stop andremind myself that I read as much feminist theory as I can get myhands on, and that I can talk about it.
Dove: When I talk about having "escaped" from my family background, I did do that through school. My family never really talked
much. I felt a kind of emotional/intellectual starvation there, likethey didn't know how to say, "What did you do in school today?" So,school became my whole avenue for getting what I needed. I becamevery outspoken and a leader very young. Part of it was compensation
for things I felt like I was missing. So, I developed very young those
things you said are still kind of difficult for you.
Rachel: But when I was in nursing school I had all these positions
ofleadership. I never felt inferior then because everyone in nursing
school was from primarily working-class backgrounds. But when I49

was married and my husband was at Harvard, his friends would comeover for dinner and I would just be real quiet. I could never dare totalk because I thought they're smart and I'm stupid. I'm just a nurse
from New Jersey and here I am sitting at dinner with all these peoRle
from Harvard.
Dove: Did they talk big words or something?
Rachel: I think it was because it was the first time I was around somany WASPs. I didn't understand the lack of emotionality. I mean
all my growing up, till the day I got married, was around Italianfamilies or my nursing school friends who were for the most parteither Irish or Italian working-class. And Paterson, N.J., was like
ethnic city, every place you looked there was nothing but ethnics
around. And when I got married I hadn't really been anywhere.
Then all of a sudden I got up to Harvard and there were all these
WASPs around and everything was very different. There was all
this emphasis on how the table was set and everything was toned
down, and they were always talking about things like Freud andclassical music or art. I was terrified. I mean I was twenty-one years
old and I'd never been to a museum in my life and I didn't know
classical music for anything. My insecurity around those people began to change when I got involved in anti-war stuff. I mean I didn't
know how to talk about classical music or Freud or anything, but I
knew I was against the war .. . a common denominator. So, throughthat I began to be more comfortable, but initially I would wake up
crying all the time. I didn't know what was wrong with me. I felt
inferior. I was afraid to talk to any of my husband's friends because
they would immediately see I was .stupid, and so I was just entirely
quiet.
Dove: So, what else brought you to begin to be Rachel instead of
Marilyn? Like for me, going to Portugal was a big step.
Rachel: One was the anti-war movement, which interestingly mademy husband and I removed from our friends back home because
they weren't doing that. Our friends in New Jersey had all gone to
local colleges and the first thing you knew they were getting married
real fast and became very suburban. They weren't at all involved
with anti-war and they thought we were very weird, that we werehippies. When I got married I lived at Harvard and I felt myself tobe inferior. Then I knew from my gut there was class difference.
And it was terrifying to me. Until then I had lived in a fairly homogeneous society.
50

Then there was traveling. I have so few clear memories of traveling through Europe, like I remember nothing about going to the
Louvre or places like that. But one of the biggest memories I haveis being in Verona, Italy, at the outdoor opera. We were sitting inthis stadium and there were blue-collar workers, not well-dressed,
looked like they just come from work, and people in suits, wellgroomed, nice haircuts, real nice clothes, all together singing thewords to the opera. And I thought, "My God, I come from thiscountry and here there are people that look so different, sitting together singing this song! What's in me that feels this moment?" It
was the first time that I saw people of different classes together singing, they were literally in harmony. And it was the first time I felt
I was aware of being Italian. Before that being Italian was all I
thought and knew, and I never thought about what that meant.
Dove: You had to go to Harvard, you had to come out and be in thisother world to understand. That's a key thing, because if you juststay there you're just there. Like I was thinking, how come it's only
now I know I'm working-class?
Rachel: Maybe if we'd grown up in integrated neighborhoods wewould have had a certain kind of awareness. Maybe we couldn't
have articulated it very clearly but we probably would have had anawareness of difference .
. Dove: I think my parents tried to keep it from us when we were bad
off with money, trying to hide the embarrassment around that. And
then there was the myth of upward mobility, and so there was always
the chance of getting out, and our life did improve over a period of
about ten years. I think these things helped to hide awareness of class.

Dove: My family knows me as Suesie and I've been thinking all thistime that they couldn't know me as Dove. I was convinced. And
you started saying to me, listen to them. Like the story about coming
out to your Mom, she can hear you, but we have to learn to listen.
Rachel: Yeah, she could hear me. I told her, "I'm a lesbian. How doyou feel about it?" I was talking from Rachel. So my mother says,"So you're with a woman, okay, first it bothered me and I thought
about it all night and I had the blues and I couldn't sleep and finallyin the morning it got light and I said to myself, why does this upset
you so much? And I couldn't come up with one good reason." Andthen she looked at me and she said, "I want to ask you something.
51

You live with B., right?" She said, "Can you talk to her? Like this,
if you're driving and some bastard cuts you off the road and it really
upsets you, can you go home and tell B.?" And I said, "Yeah, ofcourse." "Will she listen to you and try to make you feel better?"
And I said, "Yeah." And she shrugged her shoulders, and opened
her hands. She was saying, "Well then?", telling me what her concern really was.
So I'm talking from Rachel, I say I'm a lesbian and I've known
this woman for a long time and that's why I had to leave my husband, etc. And I'm talking from a place sort of non-emotion. I'mbeing descriptive as opposed to being real; telling her as opposed toshowing her. So she looks at me and asks me a series of questions
that have only to do with the heart. She's not concerned with thisdescription, "lesbian," or that I have this relationship with a woman
I really like and blah, blah, blah. All she's concerned about is theheart.
Dove: Emotional truth.
Rache/.~ Right, and that's language, It doesn't matter how we dress
it up. And that's why I keep saying if there really was understanding
between people there wouldn't be more than one verbal language
because there is only one language. Transculturally we can readeach other, by the tones our voices take, by the gesture, by the face
and whether or not you can see the light that comes out of a person
when they speak truth or whether a person seems made out of adense thing.
Dove: When I'm with my family that's the level we operate on.
And coming into this world (where I live now) sometimes I get reallyconfused with people because I'm operating in the other world. And
that's why working at the university was really hard for me because
I would be working this certain way and I'd be on the language ofthe body, being direct, from the heart and I wasn't supposed to be
doing that. I was supposed to be diplomatic, being from the mind.
Rachel: Controlled, describing. It's all form and no content. And
when you feel like you can tell people are lying it's because you cantell that they're trying to squash 'this content into a form it doesn't
belong in, so they squash it into a thing which is labeled "no heart,"
and then it feels bad and so the voice changes and the body looks
funny. It all comes back to the same thing. And that's why, as working-class kids, we're still afraid to go home because we don't know if

S2the content is still going to fit in that form, and that form is not particularly flexible. We go home with some new content and we don't
know how to be in that form and that's all our family wants to see
because that's all they know us as.
Dove: But sometimes 1 don't give them the credit that they can understand my other self too.
Rachel: But what I'm saying is that they can understand it, but they
have to understand it in terms of their own language. That's why
the thing about my mother asking me the questions about being queer
is so revealing to me. We have to remember the natural language.
We think because we have a new way of expressing things that we
can't talk to them anymore, and that means we've forgotten the heart.
It's like this. One summer 1 was seeing both P. and M. and 1
was confused about what 1 should do. 1 was talking to my motherabout it and 1 was saying things like, "1 don't know what to do because 1 still have a lot of feelings for P. and now she's sober and
we're getting along better, but then again there's this other person,
M., and she really cares about me." I'm giving this whole thing and
I'm not saying anything about my heart. So my mother listens tome patiently, and when 1 got all done she says, "You mean you're
trying to think about that? You mean you're trying to make a decision by thinking about it?" And 1 said, "Yeah." She said, "Don't
be silly. You can't think about something like emotions. You just
get up and you do what you got to do every day and one day you'regoing to get up and know what to do." 1 felt like such an asshole because she was absolutely right, and 1 knew it in that moment, butthere 1 was dressing it all up with jargon, trying to talk proper andmake sense, you know.
Dove: Trying to keep control.
Rachel: Yeah, form. 1 think that split happens when we go homebecause ... part of it is probably because we're still embarrassed bybeing inarticulate at times or not sounding smart or watching too
much tv or something. Like "playing trailer" - we both really liketo do that but probably we're a little embarrassed what other people
will think, that's probably why we call it "playing trailer," sort ofmaking fun of it. But when I'm down in Florida that's what we dowe sit around, we eat food out of the freezer that goes into the microwave oven, we watch tv, we smoke a lot of cigarettes, we get alittle loaded, or whatever we want to do, there's no analyzing of it,53

it's just in the moment that's what we're doing.
Dove: I suddenly understand why it is difficult for me to just be in
the moment. I always feel like I'm stepping back to analyze, to understand what I'm living. It can be very exhausting and alienating always standing out and looking. But I am afraid to really let go andbe fully in the moment because maybe then I'll lose this world of
Dove and fall back completely into the world of Suesie, a world
where I felt I didn't have power to create my life, where I couldn't
express myself well. (That's probably that WASP culture. Being
working-class was different than middle-class WASP, but still there's
a certain sterility of expression!) This is the work I am doing in creating this article-to work through this fear so I can be better balanced with my body and mind instead of allowing fear to keep me
running back to my intellect as a refuge.

And eating, we're always eating something. And as soon as we getdone with dinner we move into the place where the tv is, like that's
what you and I do when we're doing this together, we're always cooking or munching. 'Cause it's always coming out of the skin, we'reliving in the sensual. That's what I mean when I said I got up to
Harvard and everyone was such a WASP, there was nobody yelling and screaming, and there were small portions of food. The biggest surprise of my life came when I went to a non-Italian wedding
and they served chicken fricassee and in these puny little portions!
That would be something we'd only eat as a leftover and that was
the dinner at the wedding! And there was no hooha, no fanfare ...
Dove: You know what's great, since we started hanging out and doing this thing I've had an appetite like you wouldn't believe.
Rachel: One of the things I also ·noticed about class and I think it
has to do with ethnicity is that when I started as a nurse taking
care of some of these rich people that live out here on the lake, andthey have a lot of money and they have these big houses ... But you
go in there, with these people with all this money and you makecoffee in the morning and all they have is instant coffee and margarine. And I could not understand that because when I was growing
up, no matter how little money we had there was always butter
and real coffee. I mean I was drinking coffee when I was eight years
old-my mother, me and my sister-we'd drink coffee in the morning, and eat minute rice and butter for breakfast. And there wasalways butter and re~l coffee, even if we didn't have meat. What54

that has to do with, and why you're having an appetite, is I thinkthat the place we come from is really rooted in the sensual, the passionate. I mean, your story about remembering that all those people
were squashed in those two little rooms is like we're not afraid ofproximity, ofloudness, of emotion.
Dove: I remember last year one of my best pleasures was when you
and I started yelling with each other.
Rachel: It was pure, it was honest, it was right there. You didn't
have to worry about what somebody meant when they were doing
what they said they weren't doing. So many of these middle-classpeople, they say something and you don't trust it because they're
not rooted in the sensual, they're rooted in form, not in themselves.
The difference between being direct and indirect, taking risks andapologizing.

55

Karen SJoholm"Veronica" (pastel, 40 x 60 in., 1981)

56

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57

Karen Brodine

Censorship
1. The Words
All my life, the urgency to speak, the pull toward silence.
Embodied in the two sides of the family: like a tree
without a mouth, my Swedish father, bottled up and burstingout in mean words, or averting his eyes unable to say goodby;
he goes back in the house, he shuts the door, he wants tofeed us berries and fish and things he has grown, he watches
us talk and laugh and our joy is reflected briefly in hiseyes, but he can only watch as if we are a painting, beautiful,but out of reach. And my mother and grandmother, Jewish,
overflowing with words, loving to talk about people, nevercan I rival their stories of people's fo ibles, to laughwith but never at, the amazing quirks of neighbors and friends.
Me with one ear Hilled to the strungtight wires of my father's
hands as he picks raspberries. We are singing, "I'll takethe high road and you take the low road" he rolls the berriesof the tall bushes into a coffee can, while I eat the berries
from the lower vines. We sing but we don't talk.
Inside the house, in the cool, intimate, wisteria-shaded
kitchen, my mother and grandmother are talking, they havebeen talking all afternoon, I hunch under the table,
scratching my name on the bare wood with a stubby pencil.
They are laughing and a chair scrapes and a cup clinks as
my mother pours more coffee. I love the talk of my two
women parents, but I know how often it crosses the border
between relaxation and dire£tion: Karen, help your mothera little once in a while, Karen go get me a good head of
lettuce from the garden, so I listen, but I hide under thetable to listen in peace.

58

As to my own talking, this will take a while; no one could
rival my grandma, so I must wait until she's out of earshot
to hear myself think. But my mother and me, we talk and welisten, we go back and forth, and from her I learn thecompany of words, the clarity offaces turned together ininterest, focused through speech.
And when I see her words muffled or stopped mid-sentence orslapped back in her face with derision, or simply not evenbegun, I know the first rule of censorship, that it goeswith sadness, with someone wronged, or stopped, the shades
drawn, the expression dropping down into bitterness, so foryears I ask her anxiously out of the blue, "What's the matter?
What's the matter?" And she will never tell me but I know.
The first rule of censorship is a woman cramped in the grid of
economy and house, family and duty, powerless, held in, stopped
short. And the second rule is that in a hundred small ways, she
resists and then all at once when I am eighteen, she bursts out
to live alone, to say whatever she wants. So I learn tofollow her way and speak out too.

2. Smuggling Books Across the BorderThis time the censorship was a cop car floating along the Oregon
coastroad. We didn't have much room and stuffed coats and sleeping
bags on the back shelf which blocked our view and besides it didn't
look like a cop car, anyway, incognito colors and just blinking its
parking lights slowly. So we were laughing and talking and that
cop followed us for four miles and kept adding up and inventing
mistakes till they came to 94 dollars. We were all quiet and nervous,
he barricaded our car in the driveway with his, for three of us being
Asian, and he said 94 dollars to be paid in seven days.

59

The ghost of that car followed us down the road all the way home.
In the unemployment office they are teaching people in groups now
how to be unemployed and if you fill out the form wrong your check
won't come. It will take almost two employment checks to pay thatticket, and just glad the cop didn't look in the trunk where the socialist books were packed.
A long time ago my mother put socialist books in the trunk, andsomeone called on the phone to tell me, then five years old, "We'regoing to come and get you because your parents are commies." Ihung around my dad all day, silent and scared because I thought if!
SAID someone had called, then it would come true, they would getme then. I know my grandma had just lost a job for the fifth time,shadowed by agents from hotel to hotel telling her bosses, "Harriet
Pierce is a red."
Clara sits late at night talking about censorship in the '50s and sneaking pamphlets across the Canadian border in her baby's blankets.
"That was the fattest baby you ever saw!" In that same era, mymother was sitting in the kitchen, saying things under her breath,afraid my father would explode.
When my own marriage was dissolving, I began to write in earnest,
because I've always known that writing it, saying it, makes it true.
And as I turned toward women, their faces, their bodies blurred aslfnder water, then coming up toward me, solid, close, when I could
write she, she is the one I want ... only when the word defined thepage, when I could write the word lesbian, did I put my hands onher shoulders.
Dream of a courtroom, packed with audience, a huge noisy hall, a
trial. A man had been racist. No one would put the clues together,
I had evidence. The bored judge wore a big brim hat. I was scared
but I said look here's the gun and here's the stick he beat people
with. Then I was wading thru deep snow scooping up handfuls,
near my mother's house and a bowl of white flowers on the table
turned into a black shiny typewriter, poised there, waiting, the oldfashioned kind.
60

They are banning more books now than during the Cold War) while
they print stereotypes of our lives. We watch caricatures vaguely
resembling ourselves giggle and simper on the screen.
But no matter how anyone tries) they can't shut us up. Memory
drags out of us kicking and screaming) bursting like pomegranate
seeds) tart and succinct. At work) we stack slabs of dynamite) wrappedin butcher paper. Holding our breath) we hoist each slab up delicately) while the boss watches from a distance; the paper around the-explosive unfolds into a cloth we could soar with) a sheet against thewind) a plait of hair braided into a basket to float down the streamin) all these words to live in) swim in) that snap like alligator teeth.
Now we are a coil) a circle) a group of people protesting the Fu
Manchu film) no theater in sight) but outdoors and in rough terrain)
a coil of shouting) chanting people moving in a continuous circle)
sturdy) unending) pulling us in holding us up covering the ground.
On the picket line the women's voices are the strongest. One Chicana's voice rises) a tough wire in the wind) leading the changes.

61

Kathy Eberly

The Deception
is when you say you're only
going to have a couple and{ you end up having a quart's
worth and what started out
to be a quiet evening
with your lover has turned
unexplainably into a bitter
confrontation that slams thedoor on her way out andcalls you worthless leaves
you leaning against
the kitchen window looking
out watching her wondering
why you've failed andtearfully breaking
your glass against the wallis covered with the stainsof this is not new
to blame yourself hate yourself
slowly pick up theshattered glass cutting
into your small finger
watching the blood run, but

this is not new.

62

staggering to bed you say
i'm not that drunk this doesn't
happen as often as she's justlooking for excuses to hurt meit all leaves a bad taste in yourmouth like the truths you must calllies because
you can't stop drinking
andyou hate her for asking the one thing
you will not askof yourself.

63

Kelly Anne Munger

Re-membering: The Colors of Silence
Indiana struggles to breathe;
there are no lesbians in the midwest.
Summer dangles like green ties from an apron.
My footsteps are thick on white-edged tile,
I hear music with no rhythm
clotting inside the walls.
Grease on both sides of my forehead,amber paste like the sludge I once cleaned
from a '64 Buick's wheel bearings.
I bite down on plastic,
taste metal,
try to lift my head.
Wires oflight, a tetragrammaton of silence,
connect - I feel my teeth shouting
but hear no voices.
Someday I must remember:there are no lesbians in the midwest.

64

Martha Courtot

When We Pry Our Eyes Openi have seen the gray dormitories
at dawn peeled back reveal themselves
as a great mouth ravenous
for our small and private lives
and i have heard from menthat women are the sleepers
the sleepwalkers
they say our hands dip down deepin the night blood
they say if we awaken the day will rip apartthey tell us our nature is to sleep
to drift off quietly no fuss
into the dark oven into the dark unmirrored mouth
they whisper in safe soft voices
voices crumbling from ages without pity
sleep sleep they say
and our heads become heavy on our thinned out necks
our faces want to surrender to anything tender
but when we pry our eyes open
sometimes inserting steel bits
between the lids
they threaten us earthquakes! volcanoes!
tidal waves!
cracks in the earth's seams! fault lines!
they say this is our workand show us our singed faces

65they tell us if we wake up
the earth will die from so much rising powero my dreamers my long sleepers
anse now leave off from lying sleep
o women look at your hands innocent of blood
feel the quakes on your insides
now arise
we must move quickly to waken the dead66

Theresa Barry

Black Against a Clear Sky
When I had been caught at it again
my mother would swear
I never lied to you
where do you get this lying frombut I'd remember her telling me
Don't tell your father
when she'd spend money, I'd remember
times when she did lie to me and around me
and I'd wonder did I remember right because she wasso pure in her anger as Mother and Truth.
At eight I lied steadily for a year
I never knew why, I had to, I surprised myself
I knew it would be easier to tell the truth but I couldn't stop I'd lie
awake wondering why I lied all the time.
In a year I stopped, or at least became more devious
then each of my five younger brothers'passed through the same age of eight and lying.
And I stood in the dark hall
witnessing the cycle of anger and confusion.

67

I tried to tell my mother about this once.
I see the same surprise and disapproval now
on faces when I say that I've reclaimed lies and stories.
They see truth a bare windswept mountain
black against a clear sky. The real, the direct, the true is a jungle
that rolls each clearing as we make ittight again in a green fist there isno ending to the t,elling of truths and lies.

68Susan Sherman

Growing Up?
Why does one suddenly"
become embarrassed

cut out
parts of sentences
re-writeyears
replace them as if they were awkward
words
in a line ofverse
What is the necessity that guides us
makes us turn our backs
on parts of our own lives
our own memories
One year a cut here
another therewith one person thisanother that
Until finally nothing is left whole
No meaning is clear

69

Susan Sherman

Spring/Song
Let's put it another way
The street breaks with ice
It is cold tonight quiet
This first day of spring
Burdened with clothes
I would shed them My coatlong blue wraps me intomyselfHolds me together
How much we are lied to
Lie to ourselves
How much we hide How many things
are hiddenin these layersof cotton wool rayonskin
I am startled by differencesa lack of correspondence
As I was before by whatbinds usBut things change
Ten years twenty thirty
Some drop away others growstronger
Faces change& names
I change remain
What makes us unique70

This first day of springalone I wrote
this poem
patched a coat of words
stitched a song
Tried to find out what is beneath it
what it means
At the end of it
finally
what I would wantto sayThis woman tried to grasp life
balance her days
the worldsthat sprang
from her hands
broke from her lips
She was burdened as we all are
by ends and beginnings
But she never turned away71

Lee Lynch

The Swashbuckler
for Joan Nestle

Frenchy, jaw thrust forward, legs pumping to the beat of a rockand roll song in her mind, shoulders dipping left and right withevery step, disappeared into a candy store when she left the subway at 14th St. A moment later she emerged into the blueness andbustle of a Saturday night, flicking a speck of nothing from the shoulder of her black denim jacket, and rolling its collar up behind her
neck. She stripped the cellophane from her pack of Marlboros, hit
the base of the pack against her fist and drew the cigarette she'dstruck from the pack out with her mouth. Though the summer breeze
was slight, she stopped in a doorway, tapped the cigarette against
her fist and used her Zippo to light it. Back on 5th Ave. she lengthened the stride of her short, purposely bowed legs and found herrhythm again, diddy-bopping downtown.
"I'm sorry, so sorry, please accept my apologies," she sang silently as she walked, eyeing the people around her on the street as
she settled more into her walk. She knew it made people angry,
provoked merciless taunts and threats, but it was her own natural
walk and she would walk as she wanted on Saturday nights. The
hell with them all, she thought and straightened proudly. Yeah, shewalked like a man, she thought proudly, dragging on her cigarette,or better still, she walked like a butch, lighter and more gracefulthan a man. All 4' 11" of her was in the tough, bouncing walk. It
said who she was to the world. When the guys on the street menaced
her, she just got cooler, throwing herself into it more, dipping andweaving and practically dancing down the street. Yeah, she was abulldyke, and every Saturday night she was a bulldyke in a bulldyke's world. She loved the walk from 14th St. down into the Village
where she could survey her turf ana ease her way into the gay world.
Saturday night was the one night of the week she could be herself.
A breeze ruffled her pompadour and she smoothed it back. She
stopped to look into the plate glass window of a store and pulled along black comb out of her rear pocket. Combing back her hair she
72whistled, "Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow." When she was satisfied that her jet black hair slid neatly back into a D.A. she started
downtown again. "Tonight you're mine completely," she sang, "yougive your love so sweetly ... " Frenchy felt good. She was twentyone, good looking, and wearing her best clothes: the black denim
jeans and jacket, light blue button-down shirt, and her sharply
pointed, black, ankle-high boots. She felt the edge of her garrison
belt buckle and smugly enjoyed having a weapon for which she
couldn't be busted, even if it was really a femme weapon. Thoseknife-carrying butches were real dumb, she thought. Her belt was
nearly as sharp as their knives, but she wouldn't be arrested in a bar
raid for concealing a weapon. So far she had not had to use it, but
she was ready if any of those old diesel-dykes crossed her, tried totake a woman from her.
"Tonight, the light of love is in your eyes ... " Frenchy continued to sing as she entered the last block before Campy Corner,
the drugstore where everyone hung out until nightfall came and darkness, or the cops, pushed them into the bars. Would she stay at theCorner tonight or visit a few places before she went to the bar? The
grand excitement of Saturday swept over her, half anxiety and fear,and she slowed to savor it. Here in her own world she was handsome and funny. Women liked her, wanted to dance with her, wanted
to make out with her. The other butches, those not too busy protecting their femmes, joked with her, talked baseball with her. It
made six days of standing behind a checkout counter melt away.
Her straight clothes, her meekness before the boss and shyness withthe other girls, were all bearable because down here she was a prince,a sharp dancer, a big tipper. She saw the Women's House of Detention on the comer of 6th and Greenwich and she knew she was home.
The sounds and smells and sights of the Village filled her small chest.
"So fine . . ." she sang to herself, "So fine. So fine, yeah, my baby so
doggone fine ... "A few early fags stood against the drugstore window. They
weren't hustlers; she'd seen them before in the bars. They just wanted
to find boyfriends for the night to take them drinking and dancing,then home. Wallflowers, she thought. The only place I've everseen the guys be the wallflowers. A butch and her femme came outof the drugstore and Frenchy nodded to the butch, avoiding thefemme's eyes. They had seen each other a few times, Frenchy and73

the femme, and the femme probably wouldn't want to let on to her
new girlfriend. Frenchy tried to remember her name. "Hey,
Frenchy," she heard a bass voice call from the curb.
"Hey, Jessie, how you doing?""Okay. I'm doing okay.""Where's Pat?"J essie shook her head. The big soft face seemed to sag with sadness. "We broke up, Frenchy. She found somebody else.""Hell, Jess. And you were together a long time.""We were going to go for Chinese dinner on our six-month anniversary. I swear," Jessie said, her hands in her chino pockets, alight summer jacket open over an unironed plaid men's sport shirt,
and her roughly cut brown hair combed wetly back from her forehead in a wave, "I thought this was it. I thought we had it made,that me and Pat would last forever. But," she sighed, "I guess it's
like that song, 'It's All in the Game.'""Yeah, love is some game," Frenchy agreed. "I'm sorry it had
to happen, Jess, but lookit, you and me can have a good time tonight,
how about it? Want to go to the bars with me?""Sure. I was hoping I'd see you around. You're not meeting noone?""Maybe. It's hard to tell. I said I'd be down here, but I don't
know if Donna's going to cooperate, you know what I mean? Wehaven't been getting along any too good.""You ready to split up with this one too, you Romeo?""I really love her a lot, Jess. I don't know. She wants to get aplace together. Or stay at a hotel S~turday nights. You know I don't
go for that.""Still don't want to settle down? Boy, if I could just find a girl
who would," Jessie sighed again, watching a group of women roundthe corner.
"I'd get itchy feet. No, I don't want that. And you know I'dlike to spend the night with her, but I can't get away with that. And
if! did it once she'd be expecting it every week.""I know. You're not made like that. Better to keep it light."
Frenchy smiled, a large 'winning smile, and leaned back against
the plate glass window. Hooking her thumbs into her belt she mused,"That's how I like it, Jess, light. A new girl every week would suitme fine."74Jessie poked at her lightly with her elbow, chuckling and nodding. "That's you, Frenchy.""Where do you want to go tonight?" Frenchy asked.
"It's kind of early. How about PamPam's?"''Yeah, I could use some coffee. I worked all day." They started
walking across 6th Ave.
"You still at the A&P up in the Bronx?""Sure thing," Frenchy said, stopping outside the Women's Houseof Detention to run the comb through her hair again. "How about
you? Still typing for that insurance company?""Yeah," Jessie replied, making a face as she borrowed Frenchy's
comb to prop up her wave and flatten the hair cut straight acrossher thick neck. "Still sitting all day typing forms. Wish I could geta job loading trucks or something. All I do is listen to the girls gossip. Talk about getting itchy, I can't take it much longer.""I know what you mean. The other cashiers never shut up.
There's a cute new girl, though. A little blonde. Wears these tight
black sweaters. Winks at me," Frenchy confided to Jessie. "Wish I
could make her," she grinned lasciviously.
Jessie put her arm across Frenchy's shoulders. "Listen, Frenchy,
if I didn't know you're called Frenchy from that long French nameof yours, I'd say it fits you anyways. You never think of nothingelse, you know that?"
Frenchy looked smug as they entered PamPam's and looked fora booth. She stopped and narrowed her eyes as she looked around,half-posing, half-looking at the women scattered among the gay
men. They found seats at the counter. "Sometimes I want to breakmy own rule.""About mixing work and pleasure?"''Yeah. She's really something else. Something special. I dreamabout her all day." She broke into a smile again and sang, " ... only
trouble is, gee whiz, I'm dreaming my life away ... ""And you count money like that? With your head in the clouds?"
The door opened and they looked stealthily in the mirror at the
women who entered. "Nobody," whispered Jessie.
"Yeah, I've got to make the right change so's I can teach the little
blonde. The boss gives her to me to teach because I'm the best he's
got," Frenchy boasted. "And believe me, she needs all the help she
can get," she laughed, pointing to her head. "She may be cute, but
she's got confetti for brains."
75

"If she's that dumb, maybe she thinks you're a guy.""Not the way I dress at work.""So ask her out already. Since when are you shy?""I don't want to lose my job. And I don't like to fool with girls
in my own neighborhood. You know that. But I sure am in love,"Frenchy sighed, glancing at herself in the tarnished mirror behindthe counter and pressing her pompadour higher. Suddenly she
stopped, hand in the air. A new look came on her face, an almost
sultry expression that narrowed one dark eye and lifted one side ofher upper lip off her teeth. She made a clicking sound in the corner of her cheek and nudged Jessie. "Donna's here. And look atwhat she brought you."Jessie looked into the mirror to see Frenchy's current girlfriend
walk in with another woman. They could have been twins, bothwith teased hair piled high on their heads, tight black pants and tiny
white pointed sneakers. Donna was wearing a chartreuse angora
sweater with a high neck and her friend had a lavender cardiganbuttoned low. "What a body," Jessie said admiringly to Frenchy as
they swung in unison and stepped off their stools.
Donna quickly kissed Frenchy on the cheek, one eye on theman behind the counter who was ever vigilant about affection between queers in his place. "How you doing, chickie?" Frenchy
asked. "Who's your friend?""What do you want to know for?" Donna teased, unsmiling, snapping her gum at Frenchy. "This here's Marie, my cousin. The
one I was telling you about?""Yeah, from the Island, right, Marie?" Frenchy bowed slighly
to her and winked.
Marie was at least 5'7" and looked down at Frenchy and Donna.
"You didn't tell me how cute she was, Donny."
Donna laughed, finally. "I didn't want you to know. This one's
mine," she said, sliding her arm possessively under Frenchy's.
"Okay, girls, that's enough," the counterman said. "Order or.
have your meeting outside, understand?""Sure, Charley," Frenchy sneered. "Anything you say." Sheshrugged to her friends. "Let's get out of here and go someplace
nicer, huh, Marie?"Marie dropped her eyelids half shut and began to snap her fingers
and sway. "Where there's dancing? I just turned twenty-one, you
know."
76

"That's why I never brought her down here before, Frenchy.
She was too young. And too scared to fake it.""Well, I'm glad you finally got to twenty-one. I've been waiting
for you all my life," Jessie interjected, butting with her blunt body
into the closed group the three had made, an embarrassed smile onher face.
"Oh, hey, Jess. Marie, this is my best friend, Jessie.""Pleased to meet you," Marie-said, then giggled.
"I'm really glad to meet you too, Marie," Jessie said with a glanceat the open cardigan: She stepped back and took out her Marlboros.
"Would you like one?" she offered to Marie, then to Donna andFrenchy.
They each took one and turned to go outside. On 6th Ave.
Frencby turned to light Marie's cigarette, but Jessie was alreadythere so she lit Donna's and her own. Their eyes met and Donnacuppea her hand around Frenchy's to shield the flame. She was justslightly taller than Frenchy and leaned very close to her. "Going totake me dancing, lover?" she asked Frenchy.
"Sure thing, baby doll," Frenchy answered, still touching Donna's
hand and holding the unlit Zippo.
"You sure are looking handsome."
Frenchy allowed a smug expression to pass across her face. "So
are you, artgel baby. Real pretty. I like that sweater," she said,
touching it lightly on Donna's breast.
"Hey," Donna objected, pulling back. "You want us to get arrested?""I wouldn't mind a night locked up with you, beautiful," Frenchy
smirked.
"In there, bigshot?" Donna asked, pointing over her shoulder
with her thumb at the Women's House of Detention. "The HouseofD ain't my idea of a good time. How about it tonight, though? You
got a place we can go?"Frenchy smoothly took a drag on her cigarette. "No, I couldn't
come up with anyplace.""Did you try?" Donna asked sarcastically.
"Sure I did, babe.""Well, I did," Donna said proudly, patting her hair back where
the warm night breeze had pushed it. She raised her penciled eyebrows. "What do you say, lover?"77

''Where is it?" Frenchy asked, coughing on her smoke, her poiseshaken.
"Marie's got a friend with an apartment in the city. He's out oftown. All we got to do is make sure Marie's got a date. And it looks
like you made sure of that when you brought Jess along."
Frenchy silently cursed Jessie for breaking up with her girl.
"Donna," she started, leading their way along the sidewalk in the direction of the bar, glancing back to make sure Jessie and Marie were
following. "Donna, I can't tonight.""How many times are you going to give me that?" Donna whispered angrily at her. "I finally got us a place, something you say
you can't do. It don't cost any money. It's private and away fromour neighborhoods and you're going to say you can't?""Donna, honey, you know I love you," Frenchy said, tossing
away her cigarette and laying a hand on Donna's arm. "I just didn't
know. How could I know you would have a place tonight?""Sometimes I swear to god you got another girl, Frenchy. I
don't know why the hell I bother with you if you do."
"I don't, Donna, you got to believe me." Frenchy's eyes had thelook of a trapped animal and her brow was creased with pleading.
"Come on, girl, you can believe me," she said, shaking Donna's arm.
"Stop it, Frenchy, don't make a scene. I brought Marie down
here for a good time. She's never been with girls before. Except me
when we were kids.""You two? That's a laugh. You're both femme!""Hey, we were only kids. It was a few years ago. We were experimenting, you know? We both. liked it, but we were scared totalk about it till a few months ago. Then when we did I told her I'm
gay and she wanted to do it again. I told her how I'm femme andall. Besides, we're cousins, you know? It wouldn't be right for us to
do it together again."''No,'' Frenchy agreed. "It wouldn't be." She glanced around at
Marie who smiled brilliantly toward her. Frenchy turned back andhitched up her jeans again, bowing her legs more and swaggering.
"You got your eye on her?" Do'nna asked suspiciously.
''No, angel. What are you so jumpy about? I'm just making
sure Jess is showing her a good time." Frenchy was thinking about
how sexy Donna's tall cousin was, though. She really ought to bringher out, not Jessie. There was something clumsy about her friend
78

that made her wonder what women saw in her. She was a great pal,but still, if it was the girl's first time out with a butch, someone
more skilled ought to do it. Fooling around with Donna didn't
count. They hadn't known what they were doing. She needed anexpert, someone with a lot of experience. Somebody talented likeone of the girls had told Frenchy she was. I don't know what Donna's
complaining about, thought Frenchy. I give her a good time even if
we can't stay together all night. She's probably ugly in the morning, anyway, she thought, remembering how her mother lookedmaking breakfast all those years, her hair still in rollers, no pencil
on her eyebrows yet, her shapeless nightgown hanging sloppily on
her body. No, she preferred her girls all spiffed up on a Saturdaynight, looking their best for Frenchy. She remembered to put more
spring in her diddy-bop. Marie might be watching her.
"Hey, coming in?" Donna asked, stopping.
"Sure, I was thinking.""I thought I heard wood burning," Jessie quipped as she halted
next to Donna and Frenchy.
Marie laughed and looked excitedly at the door to the bar. "I'venever been in a gay bar before.""Don't worry, beautiful, we'll protect you, right, Jess?""I'll protect you from Frenchy, is more like it, ain't it, Donna?""Hey, I thought you were my friend," Frenchy playfully punched
Jessie as they turned to go inside.
Frenchy held the door for Donna, then turned it over to Jessie.
They paid the bouncer and walked the length of the bar. Frenchy
wished she was sitting at the bar cruising all the women who went
by. If she wasn't with Donna and wasn't Jessie's friend, she woul~'thave to keep her hands off Marie. I'm falling in love, she thought,
then smiled over at Donna as they reached the back room. It was
just getting crowded and they sat at the next to last empty table.
Frenchy looked around. She waved at a few women and nodded tothe man who sat with his arm around his bleached blonde girlfriend.
The blonde looked like a lot of the femmes, and he wasn't taking
any chances that his woman would enjoy the sights. They were there
for his pleasure, not hers. Potbellied and middle-aged, he was anowner or a friend of the owners, come in to see the bull dykes dance.
"Pervert," Frenchy hissed low, wishing she didn't have to dance infront of him.
79

"Okay, girls," the waitress said as she approached them. "What'll
it be? How you doing, Frenchy? Still got the shackles on Donna,
huh? Let me know when you're free, Donna," she winked.
"You live around here?" Donna asked the waitress while Frenchy
turned to look at her, scowling.
"Over on the East Side, hon. Got my own place. You come up
anytime at all." She turned to Frenchy. "Just kidding, lover. I
wouldn't touch her."Frenchy eyed' the waitress's slicked-back hair and the white turtleneck she wore under her black shirt. She was competition, Frenchy
decided. "Give me a seven and seven," she ordered sullenly, throwing a five-dollar bill on the table.
"Jealous?" Donna asked.
"Let's dance," Frenchy said roughly, pulling Donna from thebooth with her. Little Anthony and the Imperials sang "Tears on
My Pillow." She walked bowlegged onto the floor, holding Donna's
hand and scowling at the waitress's back and the owner's friend. "I
don't want you fooling around like that," she told Donna harshly.
"Why not? It's a free country.""Yeah, but you're my girl.""Not hardly," Donna yanked herself away from Frenchy, heranger flaring.
Frenchy pulled her back. "Keep your voice down." Frenchy
looked around and took her jacket off, still moving to the music. She
leaned off the dance floor to lay it neatly on the back of her chair,humming, " ... pain in my heart, over you ... " Then she returned
to Donna and looked into her eyes. «You don't want to be my woman
anymore?" She neatly rolled her blue sleeves up toward the elbows
and took Donna in her arms to dance more. "Don't you remember
the good times we've been having?" She knew she sounded halfhearted. It was her uncertainty about wanting Donna in her voice.
Especially if she was going to give Frenchy a hard time. Better to
get out now. Another woman caught her eye. She had long blonde
hair in a flip and was wearing a straight light green skirt and a silky
white blouse, the collar of which lay wide open and flat against her
throat. She has pretty blue "eyes, Frenchy thought as she brought
herself back to Donna.
"I want someone who'll hold me all night, Frenchy. Don't you
understand that I want a woman who'll take me home?"
80

"You want a woman who'll keep you home. You want a husband," Frenchy accused.
Donna's dark eyes flashed their anger again and she pulled away
to stand still. Frenchy grabbed at her arm to dance again, looking
around to see if anyone had noticed. The other couples were eitherpressed against one another, dancing, sweatily erotic in the dim,smoky light, or stared unseeingly at the dancers from their crowded,
tiny tables. "And what's wrong with wanting that?" Donna asked
loudly. "I'm twenty-three. I want to settle down. I thought . . ."her voice broke and she chewed her gum for a moment as she let
Frenchy lead her into the dance again. "Tears on my pillow," Little
Anthony sang. She picked up her head and looked wistfully at
Frenchy. "I thought you might want to settle down too. I mean,
you got a steady job, but you got no place of your own. I thoughtmaybe we could get together.""I ain't the marrying kind," Frenchy said, remembering briefly
the dream she'd once had also of having a woman to come home to.
But she'd never quite figured out how to do it. How to hide hergayness and live with a lover. How to be a butch and look the way
she needed to when she was with her femme, yet pass for straightotherwise. How to figure out a dozen other details about her split
lives. "No," she shook her head. "You were wrong. I'll never settle
down. I like the gay life, the bars. I like having a good time.""I'm tired of it!" Donna half-yelled, pushing Frenchy aside andstruggling through the crowd to her seat for her purse. Frenchy
watched her, a sadness welling up in her. She was going to missDonna. Whispering something to Marie, Donna walked aroundthe dancing couples and out of the back room. Frenchy finished.
rolling up her sleeves. "Easy come, easy go," she shrugged when
she reached the table. She picked up her drink and swallowed it inthree gulps, grinning down at Marie.
"You drink fast, " Marie said, impressed. "Doesn't that get you
drunk?""I can hold my liquor," Frenchy bragged, slipping her hands inher pockets, feeling the hot alcohol press down on her sadness. She
shrugged again. "How are you two doing? You look like you're getting along like a house on fire."
Jessie blushed to the roots of her wave. Then she smiled toward
Marie. "Want to dance?" Marie grinned across at her and gave her
81hand to Jessie. Frenchy could see their excitement about each other.
"What happened to Donna?" Jessie asked Frenchy.
"It's over."Jessie looked sad. "Tough break.""Love 'em and leave 'em," Frenchy said, standing. "You two
have a good dance. I'm going to see who's here.""She always bounces back fast," Jessie explained as she andMarie began to dance. She watched her little friend move from tableto table, greeting almost half the women in the back room. By thetime Jessie and Marie danced their third slow dance, to "Exodus,"
bumping and grinding as close as the bar owners would allow,
Frenchy was dancing too-with the blue-eyed woman. She held thewoman loosely and they talked as they danced. "Please let my people
go ... " Frenchy sang as they pushed their way to the table. "Thisis Edie," Frenchy said to Jessie and Marie.
"Hiya, Edie," Jessie smiled, admiring the way Edie looked at
Frenchy. She was glowing at her, obviously ready to fall in love.
Jessie shook her head and winked at Frenchy, who winked back. The
two couples separated for the night soon after that.
"I ought to be getting home pretty soon, Edie," Frenchy said
as they walked hand in hand along Greenwich Ave.
Edie was staring at the male hustlers who milled about on the
sidewalk or leaned against the storefronts. "Do you? So soon? It's
only midnight.""By the time I take you home and go back up to the Bronx it'll
be a lot later."
Edie's face brightened again. "You're going to take me home?""At least as far as the subway goes. You think I'd let a beautiful
woman like you walk the streets of the City alone at this time ofnight?""That's sweet of you. Somehow I imagined that if I could evermeet a woman my first try tonight that we'd go back to her place or
I'd go home alone. I never thought of getting escorted home, likeon a real date.""Queers are just like anybody else, baby. Got respect for awoman, treat them politely. Why," Frenchy drew herself up to her
full height, "it wouldn't be gentlemanly of me to let you go all theway out to Queens alone." She was proud of the way she had skirted
the issue of spending the night with Edie. "Just like I'd never ask a82

woman to-you know-go against her principles the first night."
Edie laughed affectionately as they descended the subway stairs.
"I just never imagined," she said when Frenchy insisted on putting
a token of her own in the turnstile.
"And I never imagined I'd have such a good time with a college
girl. Or that a college girl would ever be interested in me," Frenchy
said modestly.
''Why wouldn't I be interested in you? You're so cute. And sexy."
Frenchy led Edie down the empty platform. "You think so?"she asked.
"I never went out with a boy as cute as you are."Frenchy saw her reflection over Edie's shoulder in a mirror on a
gum machine. She smiled and took Edie's hand. "I'm just glad I got
to you on your first night downtown before someone else did. You
must have been nervous, coming to a gay bar all by yourself."
Edie flushed. "I was," she said, her blue eyes searching Frenchy's
for sympathy and comfort. "Thank goodness you rescued me.""Howd you know where to go?" Frenchy asked, moving slightly
closer to the woman.
Giggling as if she was still nervous, Edie stepped back a bit andreplied, "My aunt is gay. She lives in the Midwest, but I wrote her
a letter because I hoped she could find out where I could go to see if
I am gay. She said there used to be a place-that one-and told me
where to find it. She wished me luck. I guess her wish came true."
Edie had become breathless with talking. Her eyes glittered.
Frenchy leaned up and kissed her, a fugitive kiss taken in fear thatsomeone would come through the turnstile, but Edie relaxed into
Frenchy's arms as if in relief. When they leaned back to look at one
another Frenchy knew Edie had found her answer. Edie grabbed
her and returned the kiss, knocking Frenchy slightly off balance.
"Hold it, hold it," Frenchy said, gently gaining control. "Somebody might come," she whispered against Edie's lips.
Edie didn't seem to care. "I've waited years for this night," shesaid, tossing her hair back over her shoulders and straightening thewhite cardigan that hung around her on a sweater clasp. "Isn't there
somewhere we could go?"As she joyously sang, " . .. tonight with words unspoken, you
way that I'm the only one . .. " in her head, Frenchy looked toward
the women's bathroom. Edie was not the sort of girl who would
83

want to make out in a bathroom, she thought. But Edie saw where
she was looking and tugged at her until Frenchy led her inside. The
floor was littered and the tiny room smelled strongly of disinfectant.
They leaned against a stall, kissing each other lightly, then more
and more hungrily pressing their lips together until Frenchy began
to pass her hands across Edie's body, creating sparks on her silky
blouse. Their breathing was so loud in the silence of the white tiled
room that they barely heard the train in time to catch it. Aboard,they leaned on each other breathlessly, laughing and straightening
their clothes in the empty car. "You're pretty wonderful," Frenchy
said, squeezing Edie's hand one last time as they pulled into 23rd
St. and other passengers filed sleepily on.
When they changed trains at Grand Central they stared into
one another's eyes as they waited under the stairs and Frenchy wasglad she had broken up with Donna. The excitement had prettymuch left that relationship and Frenchy had almost forgotten how
exhilarating it was to start a new affair. Especially when she wasbringing someone out. "This magic moment. . ." she almost sangout loud. Her heart pounded until it seemed as if her whole bodymust pulsate with it. Her hands were ice cold, and she shook inside.
She was as excited as a kid going to a party, at moments so excited
she was almost overcome by a wave of nausea and a cold sweat brokeout all over her body. This was living. This was the gay life. Thiswas what made it all so worthwhile. It was a high better than any
liquor could bring. The woman she was with became a thousand
movie stars rolled into one and the most beautiful woman in theworld. The subway became the most romantic of places, with its
trains rushing to distant parts of the city, its passengers mysterious
in their Saturday night finery, its promise of new destinations andnew women. Frenchy's life became adventurous and she was-swashbuckling. She stood tall in her black pointed boots and gazed romantically at Edie as she felt herself melt in Edie's adoring, desiringgaze. Each of them smiled until her lips and cheeks felt brittle. Whenthe train came they huddled on a double seat at the end of a car
and grinned at everybody who stared at them because they'd grownembarrassed at grinning at each other. Frenchy wasn't afraid ofanything. She remembered once riding out to the end of the Flushing line with another woman and stopping at Willets Point; it had
84been big and empty. She pulled Edie off the train there and led her
to a high-backed wooden bench with seats on both sides. They
went around to the side that faced the express tracks, empty thistime of night.
"I love you, Edie," Frenchy breathed as they sat. "I don't wantto leave you yet.""Let's just sit here a while."
Frenchy kissed Edie's hair and held her close. She could feel awave of warmth rise through her body and began again to tremble.
"Are you cold?" Edie asked.
"No," Frenchy answered in her deepest, husky voice. "I justwant you so bad." With that they began to kiss again, overwhelmedby their desire and reckless of being in the open. The summer air
seemed to sit around them still as a wall and they could see stars,
the moon over the track. The pillars and roof of the station hovered
protectively over them and the wooden bench curved around themlike an old gray hand.
Frenchy made love to Edie as if they were sitting on a livingroom couch, except that she went under her clothing instead of removing it. She was protective against possible discomforts for Edie
to the point of painful discomfort for herself. When she touched
Edie's breast she knew they would finish right there on the subway
platform, college girl or no college girl. "Edie, Edie," Frenchy sighed
as she spread her little hand across the flesh inside Edie's thigh.
"Frenchy," Edie said breathlessly, digging her fingers into hershoulders. "I don't know why it took me so long to do this," shewhispered.
"To come out?""Is that what you call it?" Edie asked between kisses.
"Yeah," Frenchy said, "and this is how you do it." Her handreached under Edie's nylon panties. They were bikinis and she
imagined them black and sexy against the white of Edie's skin. Thenshe felt the matted pubic hairs, parted them with her fingertips,
kneaded the soft flesh beneath and slipped to the cavity of the panties'
crotch. She felt Edie's wetness where it had soaked through thenylon against her knuckles. She felt her own vagina tighten andloosen involuntarily and reached for Edie's softer, pinker parts as if
to find release for herself.
85

"Ohh," Edie moaned, twisting against Frenchy's slowly stroking
thumb. She let her legs fall more widely apart as her skirt rode up
her legs. Frenchy parted her inner lips with her index and middle
fingers and stroked her swelling clitoris. "Baby," Edie breathed,tightening. Frenchy began to kiss her face, tiny loving kisses all
over, when the train she'd barely been aware of thrust a hot gust ofwind against them and stopped behind their bench.
They held onto one another, not breathing, afraid someone
would get off the train and come to their side of the bench. The train
pulled out. Footsteps descended the steps at the end of the platform.
They breathed in relief, looking at one another, falling onto eachother's lips, desperate to retrieve their passion.
Although they went through the motions again, Frenchy could
tell their lovemaking had a pallid end for Edie. Disappointed, theywaited for the next train, Frenchy still touching Edie with passion.
"Will you be at the bar next Saturday?" Frenchy asked, hermouth nibbling on Edie's neck.
"If you will," Edie replied coyly.
"I got no reason to be there if! can't see you, sweetheart.""There are plenty of other girls there, Frenchy," Edie giggled,
pulling away to pat her hair down. "Now stop kissing me and letme fix myself. I might know somebody on the train!"Frenchy stepped back, grinning. "Sorry, angel baby. I just can't
keep my hands off you.""No kidding," Edie smiled back, combing her hair and renewing her lipstick. "Why don't you come pick me up next week?""Come all the way out here?" .
"Aren't I worth it?"
"Sure, baby doll, but think of all the time we'd waste travelingwhen we could be together downtown.""You just won't go out of your way for me," Edie pouted.
"No, Edie. I'd go around the world for you. Sure," Frenchy
said, already missing her walk downtown, "I'll pick you up. Tellme how to get to your house.""Take me there tonight and I'll show you," Edie lured Frenchy.
"Maybe no one will be awake.".
Frenchy looked eagerly at Edie's hips, thrust forward with her
hands splayed on them. "I can't," she shook her head. "I just can't
tonight."86

"Why, do you have another girlfriend waiting for you in the
Bronx?""No, Edie, no way. I only got eyes for you, honest. I wouldn't
two-time you. I just got to get home. It's late already," she almost
shouted as Edie's train came in. "Tell me where you live!""Never mind. I'll see you. at the bar. What's your phone number?" Edie asked as she stepped onto the train.
Frenchy hesitated. She didn~t want to lose Edie, but she couldn't
have her calling her house. "I don't have one," she shouted into thetrain's closing door.
Frenchy pulled her jean jacket tighter across her chest and buttoned it. The night was cool now. She crossed to the other platform, aware of the huge dark sky over her, over the whole city thatwas settling for the night. She whistled a bar of "In the Still of theNight." At the edge of the platform she breathed deeply, lifting herchin, admiring the stars. The magic had not yet left the night. Wasn't
she, Frenchy, still out on a Saturday night? Wasn't she beloved ofEdie who would soon be dreaming of her in the single bed in her
parents' apartment? Couldn't she go right back downtown and findanother girl, give her just as much? She thought briefly of Donnaat the waitress's apartment. She bet it wouldn't be as good as if
Donna had stayed with her . Yes, Donna would miss her. She glanced
up at the stars once more, hitched up her jeans and threw her cigarette to the platform where she ground it hard under her heel as thetrain stopped and opened its doors to her. The long ride to the Bronx
began and it was with an effort that she kept the spring in her diddybop as she changed trains.
By the Yankee Stadium stop Frenchy had unbuttoned her jean
jacket and checked her shirt for lipstick. She pulled a locket out fromunder her shirt and buttoned the shirt's top button, settling the necklace outside it. She rolled the collar of her jacket and flattened it.
At 167th St. she removed her pinky ring and ID bracelet. At 170thshe slid her Marlboro box, almost empty, under the seat, glancing
around to make sure no one noticed, then took out a stick of Juicy
Fruit gum and stuffed it into her mouth. Her face changed as she
chewed, from the brassy, arrogant look she had worn all night, to awary expression. She seemed to clench her jaw and looked, above
the tightly buttoned collar and locket, almost old maidish, like agirl who's never had a date and goes to church regularly to pray forone.
87At her stop Frenchy got off the train demurely, remembering
the time she met her next-door neighbors coming home from theirevening at Radio City Music Hall. She walked up the subway steps,
pulling the comb from her back pocket. The cigar shop on the corner was still open, selling Sunday papers, and she used their window to take the point out of her DA and to dismantle her pompadour. She whistled softly, "I'm sorry, so sorry, please accept myapologies ... " into the window as she wound small spitcurls in frontof her ears. She walked past her building and glanced up, relievedthat there was no one at the window. How often she wished theirapartment was at the back. Behind the stairs on the first floor was a
cubbyhole, a small hiding place she discovered years ago, just low
enough for her to reach. Her heart raced with the anxiety she always
felt here, afraid someone might have taken her plain brown slipons, but they had not and she squeezed her black boots into theirspace, patting them goodbye for a week.
Then, Sunday paper in hand, she flattened her hair one lasttime, chewed her gum more vigorously before throwing it out, andascended the stairs, key in hand. She did not want to be heard, yeteach step creaked beneath her feet. The four-story walk-up needed
repairs. Even the banisters creaked. There was no way, it seemed,
not to make noise. Still, at the third floor, there was no one at her
door and she opened it quietly. The little hallway was empty except
for the light left burning for her. She slipped quickly out of her
jean jacket and headed for her room. She was almost there when
she jumped - it was her mother calling. "Is that you, dear? You'revery late tonight. I guess the girls wanted to play rummy all night
this week?"
Frenchy stood frozen, remembering that she still smelled likeEdie. "Yes, Maman, I'll be in to say goodnight in a jiffy. I need touse the little girl's room." She heard nothing more from her mother'sroom and slipped into her own. She walked to her dresser. The
Frenchy in the mirror was plain, dull, sullen-looking. She had
nothing of the attraction that brought girls into her arms. She hated
that image in the mirror and the t iny woman who made her look
like that. But the least she could do for her mother was to stay with
her and act like a daughter. "Dear," her mother called as Frenchy
slipped off the remnants of her self.
I thank Carol Lynn for her assistance on rock and roll research.

88Cheryl Clarke

Of Althea and Flaxie
In 1943 Althea was a welder
very darkvery butchand very proud
loved to cook, sew, and drive a carand did not care who knew she kept company with a woman
who met her every day after workin a tight dress and high heels
light-skinned and high-cheekboned
who loved to shoot, fish, play poker
and did not give a damn who knew her "man" was a woman.
Althea was gay and strong in 1945
and could sing a good songfrom underneath her welder's mask
and did not care who heard her sing her song to a woman.
Flaxie was careful and faithful
mindful of her Southern upbringing
watchful of her tutored grace
long as they treated her like a lady
she did not give a damn who called her a "bulldagger."
In 1950 Althea wore suits and ties
Flaxie's favorite colors were pink and blue
People openly challenged their flamboyancebut neither cared a fig who thought them "queer" or "funny."
When the girls bragged over break of their sundry loves,
Flaxie blithely told them her old lady Althea took her dancing
every weekend
and did not give a damn who knew she clung to a woman.

89When the boys on her shift complained of their wives,
Althea boasted of how smart her "stuff" Flaxie wasand did not care who knew she loved the mind of a woman.
In 1955 when Flaxie got pregnant
and Althea lost her job
Flaxie got herself on relief
and did not care how many caseworkers
threatened midnite raids.
Althea was set up and went to jailfor writing numbers in 1958.
Flaxie visited her every week with gifts
and hungered openly for her thru the bars
and did not give a damn who knew she waited for a woman.
When her mother died in 1965 in New Orleans
Flaxie demanded that Althea walk beside her in the funeral procession
and did not care how many aunts and uncles knew she slept with a woman.
When she died in 1970
Flaxie fought Althea's proper family not to have her laid out in laceand dressed the body herself
and did not care who knew she'd made her way with a woman.

90Cheryl Clarke

Gail
Gail
Chicago nightingale
bred on blues and Bigger Thomasand extreme weather.
Lover of cocaine and marijuana
on tropical and early mornings in summer
and one hundred years of solitude in winter.
Gail
toucan and nightingale.
Sitting reading Jung in a Newark food stamp officeand speaking in dreams of atavistic masks.
Gailgirl mother.
Brushing, braiding other women's daughters' hair between your thighs
before that marauding time of womb-swelling, scraping, and pillage.
Gailplumed amazon.
Tearing up diary pages filed in boxes and drawers crowded withscents and sachetssinging r&b in Spanish
beating out a latin two-stepwith your fist.
Gail
midwest nightingale in an eastbound flight .

91

Valerie A. Olson

To the Very Young Womon Waiting
Outside Our Lady of Fatima School
Volcano hair; very still; hands tied to your sides(I never saw your face)
You waited for someone; something;
As you will the rest of your life.
I can imagine your face, though:brutalized into what men would deem patienceobsidian eyes cut by the words denied your fear-soldered mouth
ears lying deaf in the merciful wimple of your hair.
I take up the 1abyris for you
o younger sister(for we both are Maidens) (how old? 18. does it matter? no.)and it is heavy, and it aches when it hangs
down
my
back
thudding upon my spine as I ride ride rideAs I swing it
flash flash flash cut
o around my bleached corn head
I know as it falls that:

I will have to clean the blood from my own hands.
I will have to sharpen my own edge with spit & stone.
I will hold it poised until my own strength is a memory.
I will wait as my own sentinel in the shadows & snow.
I will bind my own wounds in each muddy dawn.

92

Yet, one night
when I can no longer lift my blunted blade
and your hair is as white as your teeth
we shall meet as virgins in the crook of the crescent moon
And you will knowthat Iam what you waited for.

93

Jan Phillips

Oregon Threshold, 198194

Untitled95

Marilyn Hacker

Almost Aubade
for Cathy
The little hours: two lovers herd upstairs
two children, one of whom is one of theirs.
Past them, two of the other sex lope down,
dressed for mid-winter cruising bars in brownbomber· jackets - their lives as unclutteredas their pink shaven cheeks, one of us muttered,
fumbling with keys. Yes, they did look alike.
Hooking their scarves and parkas on the bike,the seven-year-old women shuck a heapof velvet jeans and Mary Janes. They sleep
diagonal, instantly, across the top
bunk, while their exhausted elders drop,
not to the bliss breasts melt to against breasts
yet, but to kitchen chairs. One interests
hers elfin omelets, listening anyhow.
It's certain that fine women pick at food.
A loaf of bread, a jug of wine, and thoushalt piecemeal total both, gripped in that mood
whose hunger makes a contrapuntal stutter
across connectives. Unwrap cheese, find butter,dip bread crusts in a bowl of pasta sauce
saved from the children's supper. Tired becauseof all we should stay up to say, we keep
awake together often as we sleep
together. I'll clear the plates. Leave your cup.
Lie in my arms until the kids get up.

96

Patricia JonesMy mother is an orphan
My mother is an orphan
I am childless
There are memories of oncecreatures
hovering in my mind like the notion ofJesus or science
My brother, too, is childless
Weare artists and therefore, selfish
We have stored up our energies inmusic, projects, dusty ideas ofmortality transcended. Weare fools
too and know it
Our blood is useless, now
and latent
My mother is an orphan
and singular in this world
And I too am singularin this world and hungry
But there is no more feeding at my mother's breasts
And no more charity in these idle streets wherehearts tuff costs so very little, and fetches evenless on the ever expanding open market
When my sister gave birth, there was celebration
Her blood was useful and she rallied to the singing
97

But I have chosen the alternate route, the one thatpoets sang about and find my self angry, wondering
at the notion of commitment and necessity, wearyof these men who tease and taste and leave me
Weary of the notion of carrying no children ever totheir glory into the sunlight, into the darkness.

98Roseann Lloyd

Insect Is an Anagram for Incest1
hands spider their way
under the covers silky
secretions spin out
webs in all the brightand shadowed corners
hands quiet as silverfish
burrow the night and day
startle the leather-bound books
sleeping in the attic
glassy eyes twitch after footfalls
especially those that amble
towards the wicker couchflowering in the basement
hunch-back beetles
peer out
the fruit cellar
the motionless blue jars99

2
No room in the house is safe.
Not any nook nor ,cranny.
Not the dusty closet under the eaves
cozy as summer woods.
Not the cave under the bed
surroundedby the spread's soft tassles.
Not the cushioned window seaton the second-story
landing. Not the bay window
with its paisley satin pillows
and one thousand peacockeyes opening
to the neighboring fields.
There are skitters everywhereand footsteps, fingers, breath acrossthe back of the neck.
The burrows under the snowball bushes
that lead to the cool dark
under the large and rambling porch
look lovely as grandmother's lap.
Skitters, whispers, harshbreath acrossthe backof the neck.

100

3
What can be done to rid the house of fear?
Scrub down the floors
Burn the curtains and drapes
Fumigate
Air the books on the sunny grass lawn
Sweep the ceilings with the rag-covered broom
Mothballs in the cupboards and eaves
FRESH PAINT FRESHPAIN surely white
enamel allows nothing to hide
Cobwebs spin out
from the glistening corners Eggs
bubble up from under the surface
sheen and the anagram tiles
facedown
in their drawer spell out
the insect names over and over4

Even though the bathroom tiles
have been scrubbed with lysol
Even though the dishes are stacked in order
Even though the beds
are stripped and changed and the toys
sorted and put away
The tinker toys standing at attention
in their cardboard tower
twist and flap their hands
The bride doll locked in her train casewith the net and sequin trousseau
scratches at her face101The diamond blocks
arranged in their patterned box
perfect as the perfect pattern on the lid
grind chips of paintoff their wooden sides
And in the box that pictures maple trees and cloudless sky
the tiny men in red shirts
crackle their guns
like matchsticks struckby curious children
In the drawer of the dining room buffet
the anagram tiles
click out
the secret letters once again
5
My father's fingers skip spider feetacross my skin my motherwas eaten alive the paper on my desk crumbles
under the nub of the pen and the childin my home hunches over she
starts at every approach outside
my window the wet sheets
rise up from the line billow
wild - monster crawdads
springing on the wind102

Rebecca Ellis

Aunt Pat
Another midwest winter surrounds me.
Nearing thirty, getting tired, I have not escaped
my unfinished life. You follow me,even where the hard edge of the wind shovels
snow across flat flelds, all night piling arcs
that leap halfway to nowhere, abrupt white waves
frozen the instant before impact. The irresolute
bluntness of the snow drives me insideI pullout a thin album, snapshotsof your early 20s. A grin, your thin shoulders
folded snugly inside the giftof your brother's old wool jacket, your hands
shoved into the wide pockets.
Or a winter shot: you, alone
behind the house, feet hiddenin a garden of deepening snow.
Between pages, a negative slips out - in reverse tones
at the camera flash, your eyes fix
on your lover, her angular bodyedging out of the picture.
Your father gave you a year, two yearsof side glances and not much talk.
He worked late, came home to dinners
cold as a shadow. One night, at a tableof half-emptied plates, he sat down, said nothing,
and then: "What do you dowhen you get together?"

103

The lost framesa table caught as a plate dropped
from its edge, an overturned chair,a slammed back door, hands lowering
spoons and forks, frozen mid-air-while you disappeared,
you, and a woman you loved, escaped
the thin cheap silver on the backof shuttered eyes. Now the winter moonswells above the silenced fields, lugging its baggageof cropped shadows. You still walkthrough these same snowbanks, the weather trappedin its tiny grooves, a broken record. Snow collects
on your dark head, a covering of cold firefliesor powdered glass. You are somewhere in this yard
I shovel through, dearing a narrow aisle
in the blunted landscape. At the end of the path,
I sprinkle salt from my pockets, handful after handful.
In the kitchen, the teapot busy on the stove,
I go back to the album again. I fill in the spaces
between pictures with stories I remember,the thick white ink soaking deep
into the black paper. By the one pictureof your lover, I write only her name: Alice.
Next time the family story is toldfor my children, and yours-you will both be in it.

104

Toi Derricottefrom Natural Birthin my ninth month, i entered holy cross hospital, a maternity
ward set up for the care of unwed girls and women
HOLY CROSS HOSPITAL

couldn't stand to see these new young faces, thesechildren swollen as myself. my roommate, snotty,
bragging about how she didn't give a damn about thekid and was going back to her boyfriend and be acheerleader in high school. could we ever "go back"?
would our bodies be the same? could we hide among thechildless? she always reminded me of a lady at the bridgeclub in her mother's shoes, playing her mother's hand.
i tried to get along, be silent, stay in my own corner.
i only had a month to go - too short to get to know them.
but being drawn to the room down the hall, the t. v. room
where, at night, we sat in our cuddly cotton robes andfleece-lined slippers -like college freshmen, joking
about the nuns and laughing about due dates: jailbirds
waiting to be sprung ...
one girl, taller and older, 26 or 27, kept to herself,talked with a funny accent. the pain on her face seemedworse than ours ...
and a lovely, gentle girl with flat small bones. the .
great round hump seemed to carry her around! she neversaid an unkind word to anyone, went to church every morningwith her rosary and prayed each night alone in her room.
she was 17, diabetic, fearful that she or the baby or bothwould die in childbirth. she wanted the baby, yet knew thatto keep it would be wrong. but what if the child did live?
what if she gave it up and could never have another?
105

i couldn't believe the fear, the knowkdge she had ofdeath walking with her. i never felt stronger, eatingright, doing my exercises. i was holding on to the core,
the center of strength; death seemed remote, i could not
imagine it walking in our midst, death in the midst of
all that blooming. she seemed sincere, but maybe she
was lying ...
she went down two weeks late. induced. she had decided
to keep the baby. the night i went down, she had justgone into labor so the girls had two of us to cheer about.
the next morning when i awoke, i went to see her. shesmiled from her hospital bed with tubes in her arms. it
had been a boy. her baby was dead in the womb for two weeks.
i remembered she had complained no kicking. we had reassured
her everything was fine.
meanwhile i worked in the laundry, folded the hospitalfresh sheets flat three hours a day. but never alone.
stepping off the elevator, going up, feeling something,a spark catch. i would put my hand there and smile withsuch a luminous smile, the whole world must be happy.
or out with those crazy girls, those teenagers, laughing,on a christmas shopping spree, free (the only day they
let us out in two months) feet wet and cold from snow.

i felt pretty, body wide and still in black beatnik
leotards, washed out at night. my shapely legs andyoung body like iron.
i ate well, wanted lamaze (painless childbirth) - i
didn't need a husband or a trained doctor-i'd do it
myself, book propped open on the floor, puffing andcounting while all the 16 year old unwed children
smiled like i was crazy.

106

one day i got a letter from my cousin, said:

don't give your baby upyou'll never be complete again
you'll always worry where and how it isshe knew! the people in my family knew! nobody diedof grief and shame!
i would keep the child. i was sturdy. would be a bettermother than my mother. i would still be a doctor,
study, finish school at night. when the time came, iwould not hurt like all those women who screamed andtook drugs. i would squat down and deliver just like thepeasants in the field, shift my baby to my back, andcontinue ...
when my water broke, when i saw that stain of pink bloodon the toilet paper and felt the first thing i could not
feel, had no control of, dripping down my leg, i heard
them singing mitch miller xmas songs and came from thebathroom in my own pink song - down the long hall, down
the long moment when no one knew but me. it was time.
all the girls were cheering when i went downstairs. i was
the one who told them to be tough, to stop believing
in their mother's pain, that poison. our minds werelike telescopes looking through fear. it wouldn't hurt
like we'd been told. birth was beautiful if we believedthat it was eeautiful and right and good!

- maternity- i had never seen inside those doors . .
all night i pictured the girls up there, at first hanging
out of the windows, trying to get a glimpse of me ...
when the pain was worst, i thought of their sleeping faces;
like the shining faces of children in the nursery. i held
onto that image ofinnocence like one light in the darkness.

107pain is as common as flies. tlyou don't see it
walking on your lip, tl you can't breathe it,
don't feel it for yourself, you walk in darkness.
not knowing the price of common sunshine, common
air, the common footstep on the earth. one
moment of !tIe must be paid for, and no one
walking in the darkness without eyes can see.
the child is cut off from the mother, cut off
from the blinding pain the mother sleeps
and wakes up in forever, balancing the assholeof the universe, the abyss of god's brain, insidethat light in her forehead.
she is bright. so bright that everything mustturn and face her like the sun. every clockin !tIe must stop to let her pass. slowly,
like the regal death procession of the king.

108

LEAVING

she never went back to the ward for the girls, except
during the day when they were ,all in the laundryroom, working. everything seemed anticlimactic; thetall thin one she passed in the hall spoke as if
she hardly knew her.
where did those girls go after the births of theirbabies? what wind blew them away like ashes? those
she loved well, without question; those she wastaught not to believe in, the whore, where did they
go when they were fiat and empty, when they fit backinto their old clothes?
like shamed nuns, they left the dormitory, silent.
their clothes were delivered in a paper sack, andthey dressed hurriedly in the dark. the papers had
been signed. most had asked to be blindfolded.
downstairs, in the laundry, creatures like giant
insects continued to hum and move their metal arms.
the ones that were left fed them like robots.

109

Susan Wood- Thompson

Fine Ligament of Sympathy
the memory of the quasi-electric touchof Teacher's fingers upon my palm
- Helen Keller of Annie Sullivan

The diary-smoke boiled up
the chimney, Helen, so I shouldn't
stop hearing myself by telling words that,shapeless, haunt me anyway.
For peace between that raging out of head
and that most steady side attending densityof touch - before I know
At first I was all want, undirected want--what I know - that spells
into your palm. To understand from somewherequiet in you, I pushed away the wretchedundertow of my temperament.
Bring my violet robe, please Helen,in a moment we will sit downstairs with themthe sun flat past crimson leaves.
Teacher kept some pigeons in a cage in her roomso that when they were let out and she chased them
I might feel the air from their wings

I will tell you now about
Tewksbury and my little brother Jimmie
who still speaks to me at the oddest moments.
His bedclothes vanished, I foundhim in the morgue - Don't take him away from me!I lay the flowers by his face; they tore mefrom the room. I lost my brother, Helen.
110and know about the flight of birds
and conceive the glory of wings.
The trustees came, I rushed
at them I want to learn! forgetting
shame that relatives had said She would be so pretty
but for her eyes. At Perkins
shamed that I'd lost Mama, Papa, homes.
Helen, my sister from the moment you threw
yourself into my arms/

Her face was handsome with the contours
which swept down with happy grace over her whole body.
the force of five years' silenceso long as I can tell it, this is mine.
I wish today for silence from that greedy public!
Invisible "companion" all my life.
Why did you not ask your questions before
my heart was cold, my hair gray? What doesit matter now who my father was?

She came to me soon after the tempest
and said ''Do forgive me Helen!"
What can be more moving than a wisehigh-strung woman begging a child's forgiveness.
Or my mother? Life has pierced
me in a thousand ways, but all the wounds
are dry. I think I have forgotten how
they used to bleed. You have kept
aloof, proud world, too long. Oh, Helento climb down again in the scale of being
isn't that awful?

Teacher's many-colored temperament
even the wise did not always chart
the currents of her nature rightly.
111

I live at one remove
underwater - not just my eyescan you feel this in me, can you help me
say it? As with yourwriting, speeches, you tell merough draft. Pioneer sending out wordfrom the island.
All the immensity of earth) sky) and water was ours.

You are an impassioned
reformer by temperament. We both fightfor peace like soldiers on a battlefield.
How often have I said that weboth make too much a battlefield oflife!
Maybe there would be more peace in the world if we
cultivated the gentler virtues.
On the tour we could talk) laugh) or be silent
we were far from all society
and we could dress as we liked
and indulge in daydreaming for hours together.

Only in you have I
kept the fire of a purpose alive.
Every other dream flame has been blownout by some interfering fool.
But the old habit of your hand and my side
as we walk. Our minds touching along
their whole lengths
I lengthened my ropeso that I could get into deeper water
how strange everything seems without you.

112

even apart, we said everythinglearned everything in light of the other.
Remember me at first? Trying to teachthe rabbits to eat properly!
Fifty years ago and still embarrassed
to think ofit. And what am I today. A spindle
wrapped in a rose
My last memory of Teacher as I knew her
was an October evening when she was fully awake
sitting in an armchair with us around her.
She was laughing while Herbert told her about the rodeo

and purple cloth,a seashell in a bulky rag, but you
are mingled in my life and I am a shellwarmed against the windby the wrap of your forgiveness, humor.
The courage of what we've attempted informs
our every step and gesture
She spelled to me all he had said
and how tenderly she fondled my hand!
Beauttful was her touch
the power of love binding me to my kindgives shape to every year.
Now Helen, I feel better, once again
for you. Let's go down to Polly and Herbert.
Give me your arm. I haven't
learned the stairs. A foolish woman
never wise enough to learn what she has
spent her life in teaching.

113

Jacqueline Lapidus

from Communicating
1. You thought: At last,someone to understand your silences.
Silence of the second child, the girlafter the boy, the baby who never cried.
Silence of the little doll in braids
and ruffled dresses, cross around your neck,pierced ears. Silence of the pupil
who knew all the answers,
kept poems in a drawer, locked.
Silence hiding your bloodstainedrags, learning from the maids' chatter,
their hunger, their brutal
husbands, swollen bellies, stolen lives.
Silence of the scholar who spoke only inforeign languages, staring down at tight shoes
as they handed you the diploma, the prize money,
the ticket to France. Silencewith the teacher who spoke only to God,
with the woman who spoke only to the wallwith the second woman who spoke theories
and would not speak of women and left you
alone with her smell on your fingers
while she went out dancing
with men. Silence with me
at meals, among friends, in my arms, siience
year after year in our silent house.
I said you did not speak enough.

114

II. I thought: At last,someone to understand my talking.
Talking like talkative daddy,
telling mommy everything,talking for attention, talking likegrownups, dinner-table arguments,
shared secrets, shouts in the schoolyard,
school plays. Talking my way
past bullies, talking in committees,talking as the dentist wired my teeth,
talking while other girls
spun the bottle. Talk
to the psychologist,talk to the interviewer,
telling my life onto forms and platforms,
spelling champ, quiz kid, valedictorian.
Talking in class over the clackof knitting needles, confiding in professors'
wives in kitchens, talking poems.
Talking in bed to a turned back.
I told you my travels, my troubles, my marriage,
my men. I told you my visions,
my fears, my weakness, mynightmares. I told you things
I never told my mother, my sister,
my diary. I told you what I saw in y<?u,
I told you what I loved. You said
I talked too much.
When you said that, I was struck dumb.

115

Rebecca Ellis

Small Infidelities
You turn away smoothly, a key in a door,
the tumblers working as if they were oiled.
When I start to say something,
I can't. The neighbor's cat
wails for love beneath the darkened bushes,
but even for him the moon
won't rise. You turn to me, then turn away,
your hair unforgivably softin the midnight hollywood of the porch light.
I get in my old car alone. The dark sweepof the dashboard throws back its spilled handfulof stars, small and easy and white
as lies. Heavy-footed, I gun the cold motor,
turning over and over what refuses
to be understood - my angry facestaring back from the rearview mirror
like a cropped mug-shot, a sullen tallyof bad tips, bad timing. As I pull away
the yellow light on the porch dies,
the black pebbled road flows out
like a braille sentence beyond the brief spanof the headlights I see your delicate fingers
other hands they will come to hold my own clumsy
interpretations of the dark/

116

Melissa Cannon

Two Journeys
1
We were eager to escape their lighted house,alone together feel the packed-down snow
under our wheels. Others we passed were slow
or stalled in ditches; only you drove bold,steering that slick ribbon through frozen space.
We stopped near a junction where fresh drifts unrolled
like untouched dunes. "We'll walk from here," you said,"Look at the pure white - nobody's been this roadfor days." We would find winter birds at home,
all tame by peaceful fields. Here, nothing spoiled.
It was true. From the first fence we came
to, a bird, black-bibbed, yellow and rust breast,
flared up, taking me for some tree, some nest,
brushing my shoulder with a whirr of wing.
You taught me its skull's structure and its name.
Lured on to an abandoned barn, seeking
out owls, we entered the dark 10ft and saw
one, ancient and tattered, its single eye
a lonely marble. Then, like a dream gone bad,my hands held, from our own freezer, a throngof rats thawing in their crammed tin. I laid
it on the floor, afraid they'd warm to lifeand quiver under your dissecting knife.
The softened bodies slipped my forceps. You
said you'd feed the owl. I ran outside117

before my gripped stomach could overflow,
but, in spite of the ice-edged air, it was too late:the flood that filled me rose, spewed from my throat
the flesh of rats, the terrible chopped bits
splashing my skin, soiling the moonlit snow.

2
The next night, reading an electron micrographwe studied small gray onion bulbs that bloomed
upon a field of flesh: my can cered throat.
I touched the skin outside the place and thoughtof all the other times you had exhumed
disease, checked death, administered to grief.

It was a comfort, having you arrange
the tests, the doctors; I could drift behind,wrapped in a fog offear, as you coursed throughthose sooty corridors. And once we got to
our waiting room, I wandered while you signed
the forms until I heard you, loud and strange,
spilling hot words. The cauldron of your voicestirred up the patients - startled, they began
to twitch like torched twigs sputtering. You would
not simmer down, would not be cowed or good,so two guards dragged you out. I sat alone,
listening to an old vet say, ifhe had a choice,they never would resect his throat, he'd let
his body have its own way changing shape:
below the jaw he turned-a fist-deep cave.
At last I was escorted off by a hiveof women, stripped, and covered with a drape
as they talked shop. I wanted to admit

118

that I knew nothing, dreaded it would hurt;
instead, I asked the cost of medicine.
They laughed and told me no one paid that price,
besides, they'd had, with cancer, most successfrom neither drugs nor knives. They rolled me thenbefore a huge steel-lipped machine-my heart
tripped, tachycardic. Before they left me there,
they whispered, "It is the mind that makes you well,
the aiming of the will." And I remembereda friend who, when she lost her breasts, concurred,
felt unvoiced anger settled in each cell;and one, through concentration, found a cure,melting her lumps away inside her head.
But I could only focus on the glass rod
coming toward my throat. What had I never said,
what had I swallowed or falsely acknowledged?
The cold glass pressed my skin, slipped past, splintered,and I woke up, still naked and afraid.

119

Beverly A. Smith

Rain So Thick It Looks Like Snow
The body grows inept from lack of use,
Always awkward, it grows older but no wiser.
I stumble towards a hug, not knowing how close to come,How tight, how long.
(I have not practiced in years.)
A friend's hand lies on the table.
I take it and squeeze it, hoping to signal comfort,
fearing the message is garbled.
(I have no facility for languages.)
The body goes untouched for weeks
My mind makes aches for it,
Warning: It is still there,
It is still there.
November 1975

We sit together in the rainbow kitchen,
Speaking gently, our laughter glancing from the walls.
I feel calm and new.
Deep inside I am whirring softly,
With joy.
As if my body knew your suffering before the mind could,
I moaned and gagged, a deep continent away.
My body a witness to your pain.
March 12, 1977

120

Then there was the week my four best sisters/lovers/friends(All of them in some way being each)
Flew away.
Enough sisters gone to touch the earth's far corners.
The oldest,
We began our journey before birth,
Crossed the sea for the first time,
Was in a place my voice could not reach.
The youngest,
Bound by our common skin, the color of our souls,
This one, who with affection and frustration I christen"Peripatetic"
Was on the road again.
The smallest,
A fierce, bright presence always burning in my eyes,
Went South to join her sisters,
Struggled to regain our women's land-our woman-bodies.
The newest,
Dear sister, lover, friend,
Slipped from my hands in night's smallest hour.
Her spirit bruised, her body close to breaking,
She traveled to an alien placeI didn't dare to follow.
They left me here alone,
In silence,
To puzzle out this life, this love.
March 16, 1977

121

Like the perpetual child I am, I wanted a fairy tale love.
Magic words and kisses-my own sleeping beauty.
As often happens in such tales,
My wish was granted-with a twist.
So I have become a princess, though I don't live happily after.
Rather, I am like the scores who were forbidden speech.
Those grim brothers weren't alone in wanting their·women silent.
So since you will not hear me,
And friends have tired oflistening,
I guess I'll go and tell it to the kitchen stove.
May 7, 1977

Rain so thick it looks like snow falls into this red-brick city.
Clouds grey down a harsh landscape, blur the Blue Hills.
Yesterday winter did return, though it's nearly middle-May.
White on green leaves,Anomalous - almost - unless you're used to it.
So much for New England spring.
But summer will come,Will come.
My hands, always brown, are browner,
Predict a transmutation of the rest,
Of all the rest.
What I must do is shut my eyesTight.
Steel myself.
Hold on
Hold on
Hold out.
May 10, 1977

122

Joy Harjo

Heartshed(for Lajuana)

You dream a heated chase.
Your heart pumps time through you
into lakes of fireand I can't sleep at night
because you have found me.
You keep coming back, the one who knows
the sound they call"in the beginning."
It doesn't mean going backwards.
Our bones are built of spirals.
The suncircling.
Ravens hang the walls
calling memory.
You could call it a war. It has been before.
I have killed you many times in jealousy,
beat you while you dreamed in the armsof another lover.
You shot me down in a war
that was only our own,
my brother, my sister.
The names could be all that truly changes,
not love.
I walk into another room inside
your skin house.
I open your legs with my tongue.
The war is not over but inside you
the night is hot
and my fingers walk their way up your spine.
123Your spirit rattles in your bones and yes
let's dance this all again
another beginning.
Memory is triggeredby polished stones spit up
from the center of the earth,
by ashy rock that crumbles in your hand.
Some are unborn children, others old ones
, who chose to learn patience, to know currents.
You dream a solid red cliff. The sun rises again
over the eastern horizon. Saturn spins crazyin her rings.
The names change.
Ravens call.
Lean up against me full with the words that have
kept you silent. Lean with the silence
that imagines you.
I forgive you, forgive myself
from the beginning
this heart shed.

124

Joy Harjo

A Hard Rain
I awaken to a sky with no sun
only clouds carrying rain
to China
not meant for here
but I am soaked, will not ripen.
It's not a seed that causes children
to bloom, or others to be sucked out
by a sterile whirlwind.
It's not blood or some strange moon
whistling hard overhead.
Fertility is the mind
signaled by the smell of yellow paintstroked across a circle,
by a soundthat forces me up out oflong silent nights .
It is a raw and wild taste that poises
at the end of my tongue
then dissolves.
Until I awaken again to swollen clouds
and your dark hand on my thigh,the only hot sun I want to feel.

125

Joy Harjo

The Blood-Letting
It is the morning after
the morning after.
Your voice echoes like a broken
bottle muffled into my skin.
I won't let you do thisto myself, as for you
you can always dowhat you want.
Again.
How am I to stop you withstark words, promises
glued together with blood,or with the smell oflove
a distant memory?
Will it drive in to save us
once more? Or will the smell
be dried and baked into ribbons
against a rusty knife?
I know it was meant in beauty,
but inside there are voices
urging me on to another distanceto a place that is even more
intimate than this one.
It, too, is another morning
made of blood, but it is sunlighton a scarlet canyon wall inearly winter.
It does not scatter the heart,but gathers the branches tenderly
into a slender, dark woman.

126

Marilyn Hadfield

Just to Go On
just to go on
when someone asks about a bookand then doesn't listen
when an important instance has taken placethat takes more than an instant to tell
and a friend's gaze wanders
when the mind is accustomed to racing
and learns to be quiet
yet not still
the emptiness of too many thoughts
just to go on
feelingfeeling one's crowded emptinesswithout judging
one's death
allowing the tears to comein utter repose
to go onliving without one's heart127

instances oflight and joy
read in a book
I feel by memory
the stars are in slow motion
arranging themselves for my rebirth
I am without vision
I hear the wetness of the gentle rain
and achejust to go on
the foghorn sighs
the wind dances in my bedroom curtains
the wet streets sing under carsand my dream for only this night isjust to go on

128

Catherine Risingfiame Moirai

Changing Skin
This is the season for changing skin.
Yesterday a snake left hers
inches from the bantam's nest.
The day before, I found another
stretched up a tree, stuck
to the bark like scaly vine.
I imagined that snake risingsmooth as a magician's act:
the silent, sensuous climb and thenthe grand finale of splitting husk,
easy discard of spent necessity.
This was the best illusion:that what we are goes on forever,
only the surface changing. But I knowchange begins in the cells, hidden
and unguessed. We feel it creeping
into our consciousness as a slight
discomfort a tightness in the throat
constriction at the breast. It hurts
to breathe ourselves big. Under the surface
memories twitch muscles knot
the strain of staying small.
What was etched into my cells
from the beginning was notenough to build a life
on. Far behind my eyes
are hands in fists the shockof a wall against my side my head
the second sharper pain. I know
nothing in the rules says I
have to survive.
129

Nothing in the rules says I ought
to survive. The school child knows selectionof the fittest knows the wrong color wrong
species wrong size counts you out.
Snakes eat other snakes and eggs
and if a chicken bleeds her sisters
shred her down to dust. We speakin biological code; the animal signs
submission with voice high body low,
hopes for escape in staying small.
My muscles knot the strain my body remembers
what my mind refuses my body remembers
I forget to breathe.
Children learn stories with happy
endings bright prince to the rescue,magic tricks to save the good.
Cinderella never had to choose
who lived or how never fought
ran away got caught. But if noprince came, if no prince comes and she
won't die gentle according to the rrues
she becomes the wicked daughter. Lock her
in the smallest room. Let her
scratch it on the walls
Be it done unto me now
and in the hour of my death.
Write it deep write
Any attempt to save yourself
is a crime punishable by law.
Five years in the country and still
I remember barbed wire
angled against imperfect children,
remember how guardians checked our letters,
how we sang mandatory hymns to locked doors.
Five years in the country and still
I dread the fencing.
130Stretching the wire, I knowwhat I am walling out. The blue-eyedboys live up the road and watch us
from their trucks. Gun racks grinning,they dream of shooting pigeons one two three
just like that better than the manat the circus. I know.
I watch them back.
Under the surface, memories knot
hands in my hair twist me down.
My throat tightens with the wire.
Barbs scratch across my wrist signanother message to my cells.
It hurts to breathe. Here, if we survive,
it is not from habit.
This is the season for changing skin.
Five years in the country and still
I am learning what I haveto give up. This year
I've cut my hair. I worshipas I garden, by the moon.
There are no men on this land.
Five years ago a Quaker wife,
this year I am buying guns.
Early in the summer the bantam
went to nest laid her eggs
and set to defend ran off dogs
and snakes fierce in her living.
Of the dozen tiny eggs, one
hatched. I found the others,a single hole cracked open, the chicks
still inside dry and rotting.

131

The second time I watchedcounted days was there
to hear them calling in the eggs,
saw the first break the tiny
beak jabbing at the hole. Four times
I scratched shell away and foundwet chicks folded, crowded
in the eggs like clowns in too-small
cars saw them jerk muscles stiff from habit.
Clawing free of their protection they lurched
and tumbled crying with each breath
I saw them suddenly expand beside discarded
shells the shells streaked with blood.

132

Martha Courtot

The Anthropologist
she notices each intricate gesture
little intimacies
all touchings
fingers, lips, and the feetwhether they move forward or backand what the eyes watch, and what the mouth
refrains from saying
every silence has its own geographiesof meaningalone in the evening she dedicates herself
to the secret languages of night
she practices speaking from her belly
she talks to the masks on the walland precisely notes down their answers
with her own hands she has made these masks
using clay brought up from the lower valley
some say they are too raw, too animate
too much power.resides in the corners of their mouths
too much rage threatens to escape the unlidded eyessome would like to see them broken
throw them in the river!
return them to the mudmother!
as if each were a word which could be taken backas if harm could ever be undone
she keeps them on her wall
no one will touch them
they watch everything133

Her fears: they crawl into bed with her
sly and anonymous they burrow into her skinsettle themselves for a long sleepin the tight foreboding cellher worst fear: that she will become all ear
already the sound of women's lives crashes
around her head like a great wave
she is afraid of the tsunami which is building
gathering itself for the final word
although it is still far out at sea,
she can hear its dread risingeach day she grows more into the tree she will become
her soft heart digs its way deeproots spreading
how silent she will be
how faithful to the sky she will become
she studies the homely gestures of womenand all the while she is longing
longing with a deep and heart splitting anguishto take hold with them of their secret lives
fugitive and golden
under a dying sun

134

Minnie Bruce Pratt

Waulking Song
Waulking tunes are sung by groups of Hebridean women as they work woolen
cloth with their hands and feet to strengthen its weave. The women measure
their task by the number of songs needed to complete the work, rather than byminutes or hours. Each waulking song has a narrative which may be alteredby the lead singer, as well as a unique refrain so ancient that the meanings of
its syllables have been lost; the refrains below may have been sung by womenat work as much as a thousand years ago.

I

E h6 hi ura bhl,
Ho ro ho 1, 0 ho ro ho.
At first she would not answer
when I asked what was wrong.
Then she told what had happened
that afternoon when she went in to work.

H 0 ro ho 1, 6 ho ro ho,
E h6 hi ura bhi.
Later she gave me the shirt to mend,a thin K-Mart cottonwith lines of yellow blue and redrunning from grey to brighter plaid.

E h6 hi ura bhl,
Ho ro ho 1, 0 ho ro ho.
She had worn it the winter we met.
Under the lines I felt her heart beat.
Many times I had held her and felt
her heart beating beneath that thin cloth.

Ho ro ho 1, 6 ho ro ho.

E h6 hi ura bhi.
135

II

j u ru ru bhi u 0,
H6 i abh o.
In the summer haze she had gone to work.
The man with the knife stopped her.
He shoved her from the door to the straggling hedge.
He jerked at her shirt and ripped the seams.
Chalain eileadh () hi 0,
Ro ho leathag.

He cut the buttons off one by one.
He raped her and tried to cut her throat.
He tried to cut her throat. And he did.
The red of her blood crossed the plaid of her shirt.

j u ru ru bhi u 0,
H6iabho.
He asked if she liked it.
When she would not say yes,
he glinted the knife and he laughed.
He laughed and he left. She lay in the dust,
smoked a cigarette, got up,
went home to her trailer, took a bath.
She washed the shirt, put it away,
and looked to see what else was torn.
Chalain eileadh () hi 0,
Ro ho leathag.

136

III
OhoiohioJ
Hao ri 0 hu O.
We swore his knife would not part us,
yet fear divided us with many blades.
She did not want me to touch her,to feel semen and dirt on her skin.
When I moved suddenly, she saw
the sun flash on the knife blade.
She wanted to know where
my hands were at all times.
When I slept with my arm around her,she dreamed he had her pinned down
and woke night after night saying nonight after night saying no.
She feared that I would not touch her,would not touch, and that I would.
Hao rio hu OJ
Roho io hio.
I wanted the red mark to peel
off her throat like a bandaid
so she would be her self
without this pain: unscarred, unchanged,
not a woman who could-have beendead behind a QuickStop store
a line of ants running from her necka woman her friends would not touch.
Ro ho i 0 hi OJo ho i 0 hi O.

137

After three months we wanted herover it, to be done with dying
while she heard her rape each timea rock cracked under feet behind her
as she crossed an empty parking lot.
I heard her death each timea friend spoke the word rapeas matter-of-fact as the evening news.

o ho i 0 hI 0,
Hao ri 0 hu o.
That winter, on weekends, when we shared a bed,
we shared bad dreams. We twisted in sheets.
Some nights she heard her voice cry out
and woke herself, breath tearing her throat.
Some nights I felt her shake beside me,caught in the hedge in December wind.
Before I touched her, I called her nameto wake her before his hand could reach.
We held hands as we talked in the dark.
The shirt lay folded, unmended, in my drawer.

Hao ri 0 huo,
Ro ho i 0 hl o.

138

IV
OhoiuoJ
Air fair all ill 0 ho.

I t has been three years; the shirt
was mended, nol thrown away.
We rise at dawn to dress for work.
I touch her bare arm. She is alive.
Her heartbeats rush under my fingers.
Her flesh is solid, not crumbled to dust.
Air fair all ill 0 hOJ
Ro ho hao ri rio.

Under my hands, her shoulders spread,broad, an outcrop oflimestone, .
under her skin, layers of muscle,from heft and lift, the weight of her work.
She has made herself strong, enoughto knock a man down, enoughto tell me one night what his hands
had done, the exact, secret wounds.
Ro ho hao ri rioJo ho i UO.

I wanted my hands to be rain for her
to wash away all hurt, the trace of blood.
I did what I could. I took out the shirt,
sewed the buttons back on, one by one,.
sewed over each seam, twice, by hand.
He would not ruin what we had made.

o ho i U OJ
Air fair all ill 0 ho.
She wore the shirt, walked alone to her job.
She would not live in tatters and shreds.
139But some afternoons he got his death:when we heard of a nurse off work, the men,
blackberry vines in an empty lot;a woman raped at the Gulf station,
stabbed through both eyes with a screwdriver
so she would not see to find him later.

Air fair all ill aho,
Ro ho hao ri rz a.
Then we could not bear witness to our life.
We bought beer and drank to become like stone,
no live woman or dead in our touch.
We cried out with the voice offalling rocks.
We fell asleep, dead weight, in each other's arms,
but always we swore that we would wake up.

Ro ho hao ri rz a,
Oho i 140.
It has been three years: I wake before dawn
in the dark. I think of the mended shirt.
It still hangs in her closet, the patternof red blue yellow lines seamed together.
Her scar has faded to a thin white line.
I can touch her breast. I can feel her heart beating.
He has not ruined what we have made.
At dawn we will rise to dress for work.

Ohozuo,Air fair all ill aho.

140

v
Hao ri 0 hu 0,
Ro ho i 0 hi o.
When she got to work at five til 8
this morning, a woman named Millie was shotin the parking lot as she left her car.
The man with the gun watched her blood
disappear into the asphalt. Her boss,other women watched from a doorway.
At first she asked for help. The manleft to rape a woman in the next street.
In emergency she fought with nurses
who held her to the cart, said Lie down.
She said I know I'm dying. I wantto sit up. And she did, before she died,while they were saying Be quiet, you'll be better.
She was a secretary, three months pregnant.

Ro ho i 0 hi 0,o ho i 0 hi o.
Do you want me to be quiet? You are tiredof the words blood, rape, death.
So am 1. I had ended these lines
at the last refrain, but this morning I heard
about Millie. I remembered again your bloodin the dirt, your stomach exposed to the knife.
I want to keep harm from you. I want
to clothe and protect you with my arms.
I look at my hands that held needle and thread.
We resist by whatever means we can.
At work your arm has thrust, your hand
has hefted two feet of steel pipe141

over a counter at the man who threatened.
You say Next time I fight back even If I die.
Your hands are not quiet; your voice is angry.
I love you because you have refused to die.

o ho i 0 hi OJ
Hao ri 0 hu o.
This poem is for you, to pin to the mended shirt,
like the paper slip ,you find in a new pocket,#49, but you know it's a woman,all day folding sleeves around cardboard.
At work almost dead on her feet,she folds the plaid thin fabrics.
She thinks of what her hands make at home.
When she leaves the line, the machines are silent.
Her steps make a poem to the rhythm of her heart,like a poem for you, to pin to the mended shirt.

Hao ri 0 hu OJ
Ro ho i 0 hi o.

Copyright © 1982 by Minnie Bruce Pratt
Words, music, and more information about waulking songs can be found in Hebridean
Folksongs: A Collection of Waulking Songs, ed. Donald MacCormick (Oxford, 1969).

142

Cherrie Moraga

Until They Burn All the Books
A review of Fight Back! Femin ist Resistance to Male Violence, edited byFrederique Delacoste and Felice Newman. Published in 1981 by Cleis
Press, P.O. Box 82181, Minneapolis, MN 55408. 398 pp. $l3.95

i tried to imagine the danger, to weigh rape against death and mymuscles ached . . . to weigh rape against murder and my vagina tightened. to weigh rape against death against murder against life in pain
against life in any possible shape against the taste of their blood in
my teeth and my vagina tightened and i sweated and exuded the mosthate i have ever hated and walked resolutely past the six of them
toward the subway station clutching my keys between my fingers
ready to shred skin like i'd been doing it all my life. (Mariana RomoCarmona, p. 38)

Fight Back is a collection of articles, stories, poems, and graphics
which depict and examine "Feminist Resistance to Male Violence."
Besides the more than fifty selections that encompass an experiential
and theoretical view of feminist resistance, Fight Back also serves asa resource manual, containing the how-to's of various forms of protest and self-defense, along with a national directory of resource
organizations pertinent to violence against women and children.
Some of the stories in Fight Back, particularly the autobiographical accounts, are the most honest, beartfelt writing I haveseen coming out of the feminist movement at large. The stories are
grounded in each writer's struggle to reconcile the violence done
her, but always with an eye toward a future that might be/that should
be different.
We need to know that there are a multitude of moments in all of ourlives when to continue breathing, to get up in the morning and go on
fleshing out a freedom we can only dimly perceive and are often
afraid of, is an act of heroism. I need to know how my mother did
this. (Kate Moos, p. 42-43)
143

Fictionalized stories are interspersed between and among these
personal narratives, bringing home the hard truth that the stories of
our lives are as painfully real as fiction can be. The rapist, the childmolester, the batterer is not some unknown "monster" nor merely
the stuff of paperback novels and t.V. shows, but rather, as Wendy
Stevens writes, he is as common as "the neighbor who pushes [your]car in the winter." This is the same man who "molests [your] children in the spring" (p. 153).
It is these stories, fact and fiction, along with the poetry andgraphics, that provide the heartbeat of Fight Back-the blood-andguts manifestation of the passion of women who resist male violence
and live to tell about it.
My major criticism of the book is that much of the valuable
material in the collection appears outside of any historical or theoretical framework. Fight Back contains no major introduction, has
no section titles (only numbers), and provides no editorial descriptionof each section. For readers unacquainted with the women's movement, the material lacks connection to a diverse and vital movement
and history of struggle. Instead, it is left up to the reader and thebreadth of her experience to draw the thread of connection between
the various sections and subjects being discussed.
After an in-depth reading and re-reading of the material, I derived the following areas of concern as they appear within each section:
The book begins with the stories of women who have sufferedand survived some form of male violence: rape, child abuse, incest,
homophobic attack, medical and psychiatric assault. The stories
represent a range of women - rural, Black, daughters of immigrants,
middle-class, married, Lesbian, Asian-American, city-dwellersgiving testimony to the fact that violence against women knows noclass or color boundaries nor sexual preference. The theme whichreverberates throughout the entire first section is that surviva~ itself,
is an act of resistance.
Section Two provides a historical and theoretical overview of theanti-rape and battered Women's Movement. It especially focuseson the political and practical issues affecting the grass-roots development of women's refuges. Major concerns are how to get funding,maintaining commitment to feminist principles while providing asocial service, confronting opposition from the Right, and increasing144

sensitivity to cultural differences among and toward the people being served. One form of fighting back is this kind of organizationbuilding.
Of course, the most severely unsanctioned form of resistance by
women is to meet violence with violence-specifically, killing in
self-defense. In the third section, the stories of "women whose attackers didn't get away with it" are told. Through trial descriptions,newspaper clippings, and correspondence, the legal and political
implications of this form of resistance are examined. Some of these
women are freed. Some are still in prison.
Inez Garcia. Joann Little. Yvonne Wanrow. Jennifer Patri. Claudia
Thacker ... Lenore Coons . . . Agnes Scott. Marlene Roan Eagle.
Miriam Grieg. Gloria Maldonado .. . Roxanne Gay. Dessie
Woods .. . (p.161)

In the section that follows, four, Fight Back offers a description of amovement of women who are preparing to defend themselves before
the crisis, in the event of a crisis - to use their hands, and bodies,and good sense as their most valuable weapon. The bottom line being that women believe themselves worth defending. This line ofthinking and level of consciousness directly link these karate-kicking
women with those who kill in self-defense. As Nadia Telsey writes,"The martial art~ are most importantly about empowerment."
Section Five, the longest section of the book, is devoted to empowering women by our taking control of the images that tell lies
about our sexuality and, according to the contributors, encourage
men to rape and batter us. The one hundred pages or so that makeup this section include numerous examples of "actions" feminists
have taken against the pornography industry and the pornographicminded, e.g., defacing offensive billboards or displays of pornographyiJ;l bookstores, performing symbolic rituals of feminist resistance,
giving multi-media presentations to counteract the violent messages
transmitted through pornography, and demonstrating at City Hall
and, even, the Pentagon.
The final section of articles, six, is what I understand to be the"visionary" section, which attempts to offer some Lesbian Feminist
strategies for further survival and ultimately for a future not consumed by male violence.

145

a change
different
no more willing victims
no more willing victims
powerless NO!
powerfully free!

Although the six sections in their entirety reflect an impressive
list of concerns, Fight Back, for all its 400 double-columned pages,
contains no mention of the reproductive rights movement, includingsterilization abuse and abortion, gives only cursory treatment to the
Women in Prison movement, and never once directly addresses
welfare rights. Is it merely coincidence that the sectors of the feminist resistance movement that are given serious attention in Fight
Back reflect the areas where large numbers of white middle-classwomen are involved (e.g., the anti-porn movement)? A thoroughreading of Fight Back makes it clear that the editors chose to focus
on the kinds of violence against women that most often combine withsexual assault, like battering, incest, rape, child abuse. It is theeditors' prerogative to focus on any concerns they choose. But as
feminist editors, it is essential that the intent and purpose of the bookbe stated very clearly from the beginning. Without this, the grossest
misconceptions and ignorances about our movement are propagated.
In this case, Fight Back ign~res this responsibility.
These are difficult and important considerations for feminist
editors. Clearly, Frederique Delacoste and Felice Newman approached the compilation of Fight Back from an activist perspective,in that they actively solicited and developed articles (through correspondence, interviews, and research) that would have otherwise
gone unseen. This same activist mentality should have been applied
to decisions concerning how the book could be made the most accessible to women in organization, format, and price.
The bulk of the analytical articles appearing in Fight Back are
written by women who, like the editors, are activists. In general,these writings seem to reflect two somewhat contradictory opinions
about violence against women and to incorporate, as well, two contradictory approaches to feminist resistance. I will be focusing onthese analytical pieces for the remainder of the review.
Quoting Ti-Grace Atkinson, Sidney Spinster outlines the two
possible approaches that are reflected in Fight Back: the strategic146and the tactical. According to Atkinson, strategy is a long-range offensive, designed to achieve certain conditions not presently in effect.
Tactics include short-range activities, which are supportive to, but
not necessarily part of, the main thrust of the strategic attack.
The women who see violence against women as existing withina "network of oppressions" tend to subscribe to the first approach,while the women who set! violence against women as the single issue upon which all oppressions hinge usually employ the second.
Strategists confront a range of issues that may not directly affectthe tactician, for they are usually concerned with establishing programs to combat violence against women that last, and last within
the particular community they serve; that is, women of diverse
cultural backgrounds, with varying degrees of education, economic
privilege, and neighborhood and family support. Therefore, thestrategists in Fight Back are for the most part women whose identity(Third World women) or whose political work (working in battered
women's shelters and rape crisis centers) forces them to take on a
range of political issues and practical concerns. Describing a kind of
identity politics that is based on a multi-issued approach to politicalorganizing, Hilda Hidalgo, a Puerto Rican Lesbian Feminist, writes:
Many social indicators document the oppression of Third World
Lesbians. Personal and institutional oppression are an ever present
reality in our lives. Classism, racism, sexism, and homophobia are
the dominant values ... used to impose and justify the triple or quadruple oppression imposed on Third World Lesbians.

In agreement with Hidalgo, Susan Schechter, a Battered Women's
activist, states:
It is time for us to recognize that struggles for self-determination otherthan our own are going on and should be supported by dialoguing
and listening to Third World women in our communities. (p. 97)

Renae Scott's "Doing Community Outreach to Third Wcirld Women"
and Barbara Smith/The Combahee River Collective's "Twelve Black
Women: Why Did They Die?" provide some concrete guidelines
and examples for building broad-based community support/involvement in feminist organizing.
What became clear through my reading was that this multiissued approach to feminist resistance was not a given to most of thewhite women when they first began their organizing work. But
147

instead, through and because of their work with real-life women ofvarious backgrounds, perspectives, and means, they expanded theirdefinition of feminism and their approach to feminist political work.
In "Working in the Heart of the Monster," Karen Clark, a Minnesota state legislator, describes how fighting back necessitates working
on all fronts-within unions, churches, in neighborhoods, in Congress-wherever women live, suffer, and die and wherever those lifeand death policies are made and transacted.
On the whole, the accounts of these feminist organizers arequite inspiring, depicting a grass-roots movement of women who
can learn political lessons from practical situations and can translatethem into further and deeper progressive action.
Conversely, I was quite disappointed and discouraged by thearticles (for the most part in the anti-porn and "visionary" sections)written by women who persist in a single-issued tactical approachto feminist resistance. Contrary to Ti-Grace Atkinson's definition,these articles, ~hich advocate zap acts as the primary means of resistance and separatism as the end-goal, do little to support building
long-range strategies.
One article that especially disturbed me is a piece by Pam
McAllister, "Feminist Law-Challenging Actions," in which she
makes a case for feminists performing vigilante acts "in order to challenge the patriarchal law to do the job it pretends to do." She accurately describes vigilantism as an especially American phenomenon
with the Ku Klux Klan emerging as its arch-representative. Although, of course, critical of the KKK, McAllister makes little
attempt to analyze the dangerous implications of women operating
politically in a way that might link them with right-wing reactionary
forces. She gives only cursory reference to such implications when
stating, for instance, that the primary argument against castrating (!)
rapists as a legalized form of punishment is that such a law might
discriminate against the queer, poor, and Third World. A token
gesture of responsible thinking, at best! For it is the KKK thatlynched Black men for merely looking at white women. If it were aBlack man in the South who was accused of rape, let me tell you now,the KKK boys would gladly join with white feminist vigilantes inseeing the accused castrated and dead.
.
McAllister cites the "Temperance Ladies" of the late nineteenth
century as our vigilante foremothers. Both the temperance women148

and the single-issue anti-porn activists ignore the role of class as it
affects the functioning of booze and porn, respectively. However
dangerously these may affect women's lives, the problem will not be
eliminated without an understanding of the intertwining roots ofeconomic and sexual oppression.
How are anti-porn activists reconciling the fact that their tactics
and analysis often align them with conservative reactionaries? For
example, Marcia Womongold, iri combatting the sexual slavery of
women, suggests that we "appeal to decency, public safety, and human rights." Is it not the same right-wing "pro-family" people who
try to close down shelters through "lesbian baiting" and also advocate new standards of "decency" in this country, largely throughcensorship, anti-abortion; and anti-gay legislation? The rhetoric of
the two groups is often frighteningly similar.
D.A. Clarke rightfully acknowledges that the "power of official
censorship will be used to support the privileged and silence thedissenter." Clarke claims that "feminist anti-porn actions are therefore not undertaken to advocate governmental suppression . . . rather
they are committed in the tradition of civil disobedience." But
these actions are for the most part symbolic and imagistic in nature,
as illustrated in Fight Back, where contributors espouse a kind ofconceptual feminism not grounded by actual experience with thepeople the pornography industry directly affects: women who workin the pornography industry, prostitutes, and (do I dare say) eventhe men who partake of it. A grassroots approach to anti-pornographyorganizing, I believe, would necessitate anti-porn activists giving up
their single-minded conviction that men are inherently evil and that
pornography is the foremost manifestation of that evil. And ultimately expanding anti-porn work beyond the conceptual would serve
to more realistically, and therefore effectively, get at those aspectsof this system which damages us all economically as well as psychosexually.
This failure to realistically examine the violent sexual exploitation of women in all its complexity parallels the neglect of race andclass analysis by anti-porn activists and lesbian separatists. Women
as a group are portrayed as peacefully existing in some melting-pot
of female identity. But as Jane Howard states, "Just because we
feel a similar pain, doesn't mean the rest of our lives are similar." Shegoes on to say,
149The image of women as a "class," as a group of people who share thesame suffering and the potential for a vibrant unity, is widespreadand compelling. But it is also an image that gets fed by racism andclass oppression, ... that often obscures differences between women,
denies the diversity or even the existence of various cultures, and yet
assumes we are all in this together.

Exactly. So many white women fail to grasp that Third World
women do not merely share oppression with members of our race,
but also culture-that positive, life-giving, identity-building force
which few Third World women I know re willing to give up.
A successful feminist resistance movement and, therefore, afeminist future, hinge on our embracing diversity, which women ofcolor in the movement attest to, and broadening definitions that restrict our ultimate goals-as the anti-rape and anti-battering activists
in Fight Back have done. Finally, it means giving up the simplistic
illusion and solution of political purity. Unfortunately, Fight Backdoes not conclude with such a strategic approach. Instead it offers
seemingly contradictory strategies, espousing spiritualism and guncarrying in one breath, and Third World lesbian coalition-building
and lesbian separatism in the next. I'm not really sure what final
statement the editors intended to make; whether the contradictions
are by conscious intent or are a sign of poor selection and organization. But one thing is for sure-if the intent of Fight Back! is tofocus on sexually related violence against women, it seems appropriate to ask, how do you stop the sexual exploitation without stopping
the sex? Fight Back! gives few clues; the visionary section offers no
picture of a positive sexualized future for lesbians or heterosexual
women.
What Fight Back! does offer, however, is very valuable. It provides the in-print verification that the feminist resistance movement
has been alive and kicking for over a decade and has entered theeighties with some well-founded experience tucked under its belt,some hard lessons learned, and some very important work done.
Until they burn all the books, Fight Back! will give testimony to theevolution of our movement and to some of the flesh-and-blood female
reasons for it and behind it;

150

Judith Barrington

Not at Any Cost
A review of Annapurna: A Woman's Place by Arlene Blum. Published by
Sierra Club Books, California, 1980. $14.95.

In her introduction to Annapurna A Woman's Place, Arlene Blum,leader of the "successful" 1978 expedition by ten women, quotes amale climbing guide she Once knew: "There are no good women
climbers. Women climbers either aren't good climbers or they aren't
real women." Although Blum claims that personal reasons motivated the women climbers as much as a need to respond to the sexism of the mountaineering world, it is a desire to prove something
to the male world that emerges in this book as the main explanation for the all-women trip to Annapurna. Because of this, the bookraises important questions about women achieving according to malevalues, and what a feminist concept of achievement might be.
The introduction documents the need for women to prove themselves to men, by describing the sickening sexism of male "heroes"such as Sir Edmund Hillary (''the problems and dissensions in multinational expeditions pale into insignificance compared with thosethat can be brought about by a single woman in a party") and one ofhis expedition members ("if you want to climb with the expedition,
you ought to be willing to sleep with all the men on the team").
Described here also are the achievements of the very few women,such as Fanny Bullock Workman and Annie Peck, who defied or ignored these conditions and climbed high mountains at the beginningof the century.
Blum enters into a certain level of discussion about the situation,
capabilities and aspirations of women climbers. Unfortunately,while making superficially positive statements about women's
strength, she also makes many defensive statements that collude
with, and reinforce, the prejudices of the male-identified part of her
audience. Most of these take the form of reassurances that, despite151their extraordinary toughness, these women are perfectly "normal."
The most explicit are her assurances of their "femininity," which insome cases includes their being good mothers. Less explicit, but
always clearly implied, is their heterosexuality, and where "proof"(such as a husband) is just not available, a noticeable silence surrounds the personal life of the climber concerned.
In the first chapter, for example, we are introduced to the teammembers one at a time. The first description is of Vera Watson,"the proper lady of the group," and includes phrases like "outwardly
feminine, even fluttery" and "slim and elegant in her beige travelingsuit and Dior glasses.» The second description begins, "Irene Miller
was already writing a letter to her family," and goes on to tell us
she was the only mother on the team with children still at home,while Blum's introduction of her own personal situation reads,"Leaving my boyfriend, John Percival, when the flight was called
was very hard." While I have no doubt that these descriptions areaccurate, the emphasis on family commitment and heterosexual re-.
lationships seems unduly prominent.
Blum's attempts to "prove" the "femininity" of these strong
women sometimes verges on homophobia. Despite constant reference to the heterosexual relationships of team members, there isnoticeable caution about describing emotional bonds between thewomen. The first time that a close tie of affection between two of
the climbers is mentioned, the author explains it in relation to theirhusbands: "In addition to both living in Europe and being superb
technical climbers, Liz and Alison were both married to renowned
alpinists, with whom they usually climbed." I got the feeling that
Alison Chadwick, in particular, was a problem to describe, becauseof her unswerving commitment to making the climb an all-woman
enterprise-an attitude that provoked even greater efforts on Blum's
part to establish Alison as a "true woman."Clearly the conflict between being a good climber and a "truewoman" only exists when men are allowed to define women. Similar~y, the desire for "glory," the idea of "conquest," and the willingness to respond to a personal challenge with a one-in-ten chance ofdeath, all seem to be part of a relationship to mountain climbingthat has been defined exclusively by men and needs to be questioned
by women. We need carefully to evaluate the reasons why we would
lose our lives in a struggle to prove that we, too, can achieve that152

kind of "glory." This book is, in many ways, a testament that furnishes proof of women's ability and courage, but the underlying assumptions about what constitutes success, or what deserves glory,
are never questioned.
Anyone who has read Susan Griffin's Woman and Nature: The
Roaring Inside Her cannot help thinking of mountain climbing, as
men have defined it, in the context of a long history of men's needto control and contain the power of nature and.of women. To lovea mountain is not necessarily to climb to its highest point and planta national flag on its head, any more than to love a woman is to put
a ring on her finger and say she is "yours." As things stand now, thedefinition of a "successful" climb revolves entirely around the question of"summiting," not around any other aspect of the experience,or its value to the participants. Feminists might consider a redefinition of "success," when two women's lives are lost and a great variety
of incidents, both positive and negative, occur during the team's
stay on the mountain. The attention paid to interaction between
members (noticeably neglected on this trip), new skills learned, relationships with the outdoors, and personal satisfaction of all kinds,
seem to be important components of overall success. The brief moment when two white women and two Sherpa men stood on thesummit of Annapurna, planting their various flags, may have been
what all that effort and the considerable expense was for, but I wonder how much of the women's satisfaction at that moment was a direct inheritance from the white man's imperialism in the natural
world.
Another unwelcome inheritance from the white man is the uneasy relationship that Blum describes between climbers and Sherpas(who are, of course, also climbers, but are never directly identified
as such). Since there was no advance questioning of the system,
the team flnds itself slotted into the old established routine, wherevisiting climbers use the labor oflocal people to help them in a variety
of ways. Since high-altitude climbing is a regulated industry in
Nepal, there are all sorts of rules and regulations that control the
pay and conditions of work for both porters, who carry enormous
loads from the last accessible road to the base camp, and Sherpas,
who work at high altitudes, climbing and carrying loads, often to
the summit itself.
The Sherpas are a tribal people of Tibetan origin, who are153physically adapted to living at high altitudes, and so are unlikely tosuffer from the altitude sickness that often afflicts visitors. Although
they share in the dangers, and are skilled in very difficult climbing
techniques, they always have the status of servants to the team"members," and get little or no share in the "glory" of reaching the
top. Like other servants, they can be rendered invisible, as when
Blum describes the pleasure felt by many of the women at the "absence of men" on the expedition, right after she recounts a particularly difficult piece of climbing shared with two Sherpas.
Blum's account reveals a consistent level of discomfort with therelationships between the team of all-white women and the Sherpas.
The women, who are addressed by Sherpas as "Memsahib" or "woman
master," in the tradition of the British raj, express feelings ranging
from pity to guilt. This guilt first shows up in relation to the porters,
when Blum protests that she cannot afford to pay them extra for unloading boxes from the bus. Later that night "at dinner, Lopsang
watched as most of the members ordered beer at fifteen rupees abottle-a day's wages for a local porter. I blushed as I imagined him
thinking, memsahibs have little money for porters-much for beer."
Although there are moments of companionship between "members" and Sherpas that appear to transcend the uneasy master/servant dynamic, on the whole Blum's efforts to improve the system
are so tentative as to make matters worse. A prime example is her
attempt to arrange, from the U .S., the inclusion of some women
Sherpas in the team, who might benefit from the prestige and hig
pay that goes with high-altitude work. Inevitably, this plan, conceived without any understanding of the Sherpas' culture, leads tothe hiring of only two women, both of whom are relatives of thehead Sherpa, and who are expected to do laundry and dishwashingas well as to improve (male) Sherpa morale by their presence. When
faced with this situation, the exact opposite of her intentions, Blum
decides to dismiss the women, but is persuaded to take them along
as far as base camp.
Later, when the team is established high on the mountain, theSherpas go on strike, leaving the women in a storm and causing
Blum to return to base camp, where she negotiates with them tostay, which they agree to do for more money. Again the liberal
guilt is in evidence, as she says, "I was relieved that the Sherpas
had not left, and was willing to pay them the extra money. Though154high by local standards, their daily wage of about $2.50 did not seemso to us, considering the perilous work they do. We had alreadyplanned to give them a lot of extra pay in the form ofbakshish [tips]
at the end of the trip." This incident is difficult to understand, eventhough a whole chapter is devoted to the events surrounding it. It
seems that there is a great deal of racism, in the form of cultural insensitivity on the part of the women, particularly surrounding theirinsistence that the Sherpas leave their sleeping bags at the various
camps to avoid carrying unnecessary weight. This apparently offends the Sherpas, for reasons the women never understand, butwhich seem to go beyond their very American analysis that attributes the Sherpas' concern to the monetary value of the bags.
Things are further complicated by the obvious sexism of the
Sherpas toward the women climbers. It is at this point of high tension in the climb that the Sherpas revert to paternalism, perhaps inan effort to redress the power balance. During the strike negotiations, the head Sherpa reveals his attitude: "Men are men and women
are women. You should have men along with the first summit team.
We don't want you women to disappear on the mountain." AlthoughBlum disagrees, the problem, like so many others, is put to one side.
The Sherpas temporarily take charge, ignoring Blum's plan for the
next stage of the climb, and insist on leading the way themselves.
Only the illness of one of the rebellious Sherpas brings this particular conflict to an end.
Despite Alison Chadwick's constant dissatisfaction at the inclusion of male Sherpas in the summit team, and Blum's own desire
for the first attempt to be made only by women, the Sherpas' determination wins out. When the women finally decide to include only
one Sherpa in the summit team, the Sherpas disagree, forcing thetwo women members to take along all three of the Sherpas who areat the high camp IV, ultimately leaving one at camp V and taking
the other two to the summit. This leaves no Sherpa support at allfor the second summit team, consisting of Alison Chadwick and Vera
Watson. Annie Whitehouse, originally included in the second team,backs out of the attempt, insisting that it is not safe, despite strongpressure by Alison and Vera.
On October 15th, 1978, Vera Komarkova, Irene Miller, Chewang
Rinjing and Mingma Twering reach the summit of Annapurna. Piro
Kramar, originally part of that first team, waits at camp V, giving
155

up the last stretch because of a frostbitten finger, choosing, instead,to safeguard her future as a surgeon. The next day, Blum tries, over
the radio, to talk Alison and Vera out of going up to the top alone,
but they set off, watched from below by the film crew, until approaching darkness cuts off contact. No more is heard of them until
three days later, when two Sherpas go up to look for them and findtheir bodies, which are never recovered.
I recently saw the film of this expedition to Annapurna and foundmyself, along with the rest of the audience, swept into a wave of emotion as the climbers reached the top of the mountain. Like the book,the film is full of beautiful photography, and the music adds an
atmosphere in which it is easy to feel elated at the women's achievement. But later, despite understanding the appeal of "success" in a
man's world, I felt cheated, as I realized how many important qualities these women had to put aside in order to "prove" their strengthand courage on men's terms.
It is hard to imagine, in this world that is so inexorably maledefined, what a feminist definition of "success" might be in the context of high-altitude climbing. Certainly one component would remain the demonstration of strength and courage, measured perhaps
by the willingness of each woman to push her limits and reach new
personal heights, but not at any cost. I would hope, too, that success would include careful attention to group process, the willingness to say "no" to challenges that present a high danger to life, anda way of organizing the tasks of the expedition without exploiting
anyone.

156

Joy Harjo

A Treatise on Loving Ourselves
A review of Chosen Poems- Old dnd New by Audre Lorde. Published1982 by W. W. Norton & Company, 500 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY
10036. ll5 pp. $12. 95 cloth, $5.95 paper.

Not long ago I dreamed a woman holding fire in her hands. She
cradled a volcano of rage as if it were a child, or her aging mother.
The flames were intense, roaring, but she was not destroyed, as
Audre and I watched.
This monumental collection of Audre Lorde's work spans thirty
years. The earliest poem, "Memorial I," is dated 1950 and speaks:
If you come I will be silent
nor speak harsh words to you I will not ask you why, now
nor how, nor what you knew.

The poet doesn't realize her own power yet, but approaches it
cautiously, begins to open into it. Contrast this with a stanza fromthe last poem included, "Need: A Choral of Black Women's Voices":
Borrowed hymns veil the misplaced hatredsaying you need me you need me you need me
like a broken drum
calling me black goddess black hope black strength
black mother
you touch me
and I die in the alleys of Boston
with a stomach stomp,ed through the small of my backa hammered-in skull in Detroit
a ceremonial knife through my grandmother's used vagina
my burned body hacked to convenience in a vacant lot
I lie in midnight blood like a rebel city
bombed into false submission
and our enemies still sit in power
and judgment
over us all.

157

Here the poet has claimed her own power. A transformation has
progressively taken place with each poem in between. She takes her
responsibility as a tribal person, a warrior woman. The silence she
was taught because she was born black, born a woman, born herself has been undone, set afire. Perhaps beneath all spaces of voicelessness is a rage.
In this collection she has chosen to recognize the rage, has recognized herself. Rather than be consumed she has chosen to speak,and knows that it is not without risk. In The Cancer Journals* Lordesays: "... I am afraid-you can hear it in my voice-because the transformation of silence into language and action is an act of self-revelationand that always seems fraught with danger."
The rage is transformed into power, rather than an undoing.
She refuses to become a victim of hatred, and also refuses to give
her strength to the enemy by fighting back with the same hatred,
which is often the first instinct. In the poem, "A Poem for Womenin Rage," the enemy becomes the victim of her own hatred, which
she has never tried to understand, and the poet emerges victorious:
the woman with white eyes has vanished
to become her own nightmare
a french butcher blade hangs in my house
love's token

She has turned the hatred around by her own understanding, her
own love. She has conquered her own fear .
Lorde's work has been a tremendous lnfluence on my work andthe work of many other writers, .especially Third World women.
She, like many of us, has been the embodiment of other people's
fears. She is black, is a woman, is a lesbian, and throughout it all awarrior. Her voice is tribal, circular, and she has beautifully maintained it in a world that constantly feeds the illusion of separation,rather than connection between all. It is especially difficult for mostThird World people to speak in a language that by its own nature is"anti-tribal," a language that divides the world into objects, and islinear in structure. Meridel LeSueur has spoken: "I remember the
future, " the Indians say. This is what we must do. The linear leads
straight to the bomb . .. the language of the Indians has no nouns. The* The Cancer Journals, Spinsters, Ink, RD 1, Argyle, NY 12809.
158

language is based on relationships . .. * Lorde takes the language, sharpens it like a knife.
It is a struggle to be who we are in "a land where other people
live," because they have given us a mirror that would have us believe a false reflection, a reflection that would whiten our bones, ourvery hearts, our dreams. It forces a constant war, one in which we've
paid dearly with our relatives:
yet how many of our sisters' and daughters' bones
whiten in secret
whose names we have not yet spoken
whose names we have never spoken
I have never heard their names spoken.
("The Evening News")

She names them to keep them alive.
But even this war has been used to clarify her vision, rather thanto destroy it. As a survivor she has developed her warrior vision.
It is a circular vision, takes in all senses. The reality is rooted,
rounded, like a woman. All this time we have been taught by the
mirror that being a woman, black, with tribal sensibilities is a "primitive state." We were lied to. It is, rather, an evolution, as Lorde
proves in this collection of poems.
The poet has a tribal consciousness which realizes that there isno separation, that all are her children, her mothers. She knows thatlove is the gravity. In the poem, "To My Daughter the Junkie on aTrain," she speaks for "a long-legged girl with a horse in her brain."
She takes the child's false dreaming into herself, takes the pain as
her own blood, and ultimately, heals, connects. Pain binds us, evenmadness.
In the poem, "Now," she chants so that we realize the sly trickof separation:
Woman powerisBlack poweris
Human power ...

* We Sing Our Struggle, A Tribute to Us All, edited by Mary McAnally, Cardinal
Press, 76 North Yorktown, Tulsa, OK.

159

which is: woman
is not separate fromblack
is not separate from
human
now.

Her own blood children are often the cadence, the rhythm, themeaning in her poems. With them, through them she talks herself
into the future, knowing there is no separation. She teaches themand is taught. Especially moving lines from the poem, "For Each of
You," are:
Rememberour sunis not the most noteworthy star
only the nearest

and,Each time you love
love as deeply
as ifit were
forever
only nothing iseternal.

Like these, other poems in this collection have an intense sensuality.
Body is not a division between mind and spirit. Lorde reaffirmsthat woman is rich, dark, fertile, and sweet. There need be no shame
between women:
Out of my flesh that hungers
and my mouth that knows
comes the shape I am seeking
for reason.
The curve of your waiting bodyfits my waiting hand
your breasts warm as sunlightyour lips quick as young birds
between your thighs the sweet
sharp taste oflimes.

And from "Love Poem":
Greedy as herring-gulls
or a child160

I swing out over the earth
over and overagain.
One of the most important poems to speak of, and a poem thatis probably the prelude to her collection, The Black Unicorn, * is"The Winds of Orisha." In this poem she calls forth her own tribal
history. She calls forth the stories, the myths, the legends that havebeen a part of her often unspoken history since time immemorial,
the power of which will overcome "the pages of their daily heralds."
We were not born into the struggle without weapons, withoutwords and dreams to remember, which ancient stories, legends,
evoke. We will always have a part in them, as long as we can speak:This land will not always be foreign.
How many of its women ache to bear their stories
robust and screaming like the earth erupting grain
or thrash in padded chains mute as bottles
hands fluttering traces of resistanceon the backs of once lovers
half the truth
knocking in the brain like an angry steampipe
how many
long to work or split open
so bodies venting into silence
can plan the next move?
Silence is deadly when used not to balance but to cut out tongues.
It is a power that would lead to our destruction, to our forgetting
ourselves, and would keep us from "remembering the future." Language, stories do help recreate the world, keep it spinning:
Impatient legends speak through my fleshchanging this earths formation
I understand that poems from The Black Unicorn were not gleaned
and included in the collection because, in Lorde's words, ''the wholeness of that sequence/conversation cannot yet be breached." Evenso, I feel the exclusion is a weakness because The Black Unicorn isthe center around which this collection revolves. Perhaps the only
way to have solved it would have been to have included the wholebook as a section in itself.

* The Black Unicorn, 1978, W. W. Norton Co., 500 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY
10036.
161

Chosen Poems- Old and New is a book of centuries of courage.
It is a beautiful weapon in the war against the images we, as Third
World women, are taught to believe. It is the reaffirmation of ourown blood, our own rage. Lorde claims herself, and by doing sogathers all of us together, denying no history, no matter how painful.
This collection could be called a treatise on loving ourselves.
It speaks a scalding truth, no vision is spared. Perhaps the refrainof this collected work could be:
How much of this truth can I bear to see
and still Ii ve
unblinded?

Lorde has spoken well for many of us, and helped clear the way formany of us to speak. This collection is truly fire in her hands.

162

Gloria /. Joseph"A Bridge and Field of Women"
A review of Zami: A New Spelling of My Name, by Audre Lorde. Crossing
Press, Trumansburg, NY 14886. 256 pp. $16.95 cloth, $7.95 paper.

Zami is a biomythography-a form combining elements ofhistory, biography and myth.
Newly coined words are often curiously intriguing in that they
open new vistas; they cause us to see, appreciate and understandmore than we realize we have the capacity to do. Audre Lorde's
Zami, a product of the new form, is similarly intriguing. It provides
a fruitful source which makes it possible to concretize and personify
the full meaning of the terms, woman-identified woman, and relationships between Black women. Thus, it serves as a conduit forthe clarification of the core of being Black and woman and surviving.
The book offers the reader an illuminating, and experientiallyrich literary feast. Vicariously we experience Lorde's joie de vivre
and her painful encounters. We feel her womanness, her strength,
fears and pain as she steadfastly ploughs through her childhood,adolescence, and young adulthood, experiencing, perceiving, rejecting and accepting life's complexities.
The richness of the book lies in the particulars of the events in
her life, the backdrops from which they emerge and the writing
itself. The story of a Black woman, born in the prewar depression
and growing up in Harlem, U.S.A., would be sufficient for a greatbook, but Lorde gives us so much more. Her superior craft and creativity highlight the triumphs, tribulations, struggles and successes.
Graphic descriptions take us through Lorde's childhood as alegally blind, non-speaking yet vocally loud, recalcitrant, yet strategically obedient youngster, ce • • • My mother was pinching my ear
off one bright afternoon, while I lay spread-eagled on the floor of
the Children's Room [in the library] like a furious little brown toad,screaming bloody murder and embarrassing my mother to death . ..
Suddenly, I looked up, and there was a library lady standing over me.
163

'Would you like to hear a story, little girl?' Part of my fury was because I had not been allowed to go to that secret feast called story
hour because I was too young, and now here was this strange lady
offering me my own story."In this powerfully lyrical work, Lorde's beginning chapters
portray the family's style of coping with ever-insidious and constantracism, coupled with the conflicts inherent in being transplanted
from one culture to another. The description of the mother's role
reflects the travails that so many Black mothers have suffered; withbody and soul scarred, tempered and strengthened, they protect
their children from what they consider the too harsh realities ofbeing Black and young and very vulnerable to the violence and cruelties of the racist American society.
"... As a very little girl, I remember shrinking from a particularsound, a hoarsely sharp, gutteral rasp, because it often meant a nasty
glob of grey spittle upon my coat or shoe an instant later. My motherwiped it off with the little pieces of newspaper she always carried inher purse. Sometimes she fussed about low-class people who had
no better sense nor manners to spit into the wind ... " Such events
are woven into the backdrop of a holistic worldview, informed by
the disciplines of sociology, psychology, history, mythology and religion.
The specifics of the West Indian culture and its impact on thefamily life are told with verve, leaving us with lucid, lingering imagesof that paragon of culture - Caribbean life! Lorde describes the island
where her mother was born - "Carriacou, a magic name like cinnamon, nutmeg, mace, the delectable little squares of guava jelly eachlovingly wrapped in tiny bits of crazy-quilt wax paper cut preciselyfrom bread wrappers, the long sticks of dried vanilla and the sweetsmelling tonka bean, chalky brown nuggets of pressed chocolate forcocoa-tea, all set on a bed of wild bay laurel leaves, arriving every
Christmas time in a well wrapped tea tin."With candor and clarity, the writer weaves detailed intimate
aspects of everyday occurrences and behaviors. The racism in religious and educational institutions, and the young woman's initiation
into sex, both heterosexual and homosexual, are depicted without
sensationalism or high drama. That is not to say that the traumatic,
dynamic elements are missing, nor are they belittled, but rather told
in a believable and forthright manner. There is a moving and pain164

fu1 story of an abortion, and other experiences to which many Blackgirls growing up in America can relate. The white store owner withthe drooling eyes, lascivious mind and lecherous fingers furtively
trying to make some kind of physical contact; the Black male schoolmate who threatens with violence' or mind fucks if not ~lowed sexualliberties; and relationships with "politically enlightened" white maleand female leftists.
In her biomythography, Lorde recreates her past. She delivers
the message that until one acknowledges one's whole past, and dignifies it with an honest and frank examination of its nature, however
painful the process, one cannot be free for a future of one's own. The
author informs us that we must learn from our past and not romanticize it but have the courage, the zest to "re-1ive" it, to tell it like it
was. For, if we move through experiences avoiding their meanings,
they lurk in the unconscious and haunt us like a shadow constantly
in evidence no matter where the sun.
The importance of female friends is essential to the book. Lorde's
first true friend is Gennie, a Black high school chum who was, "thefirst person in my life that I was ever conscious ofloving." The two
teenagers perform with a daring that brings both laughter and sadness
to the reader. The two are filled with the bravado of youth as they
establish, fight, and conquer worlds of their own making. We canidentify with them as they go about the business of beating the system: the institutions, the authorities, the family, parents, the school
teacher, the government, officials, and civil servants. They play
hooky, smoke cigarettes, sass adults with risque words, and in theirdefiance feel that they have accomplished that which has never beenaccomplished or done before. In their outrageous dress, they paradethrough the streets of New York City as gypsies, hussies, Mexican
princesses or witches. The relationship with Gennie is brief andcataclysmic and a thunderQus dynamic in the book. Gennie meets
her suicidal death at age sixteen.
At seventeen and two weeks after high school graduation, theprotagonist leaves her family home. At this point in t~e book, life
increasingly becomes .a "bridge and field of women" as her Black
women's socialization begins in earnest. Meeting, socializing, copingwith and loving the different women she meets, Lorde learned what
it meant to be young, Black, gay and lonely in the fifties. "A lot of
it was fine, feeling I had the truth and the light and key, but a lot of165

it was purely hell. There were no mothers, no sisters, no heroes.
We had to do it alone, like our sister Amazons, the riders on the loneliest outpost of the kingdom of Dahomey."
We meet women who are critical in her definition of the social,sexual and political dimensions of gay life, beginning with Ginger.
"Ginger. Snapping little dark eyes, skin the color of well-butteredcaramel, and a body like the Venus of Willendorf." There are alliances with white women, and the mythic and erotic connection with
Afrekete. "Afrekete. Afrekete ride me to the crossroads where weshall sleep, coated in the women's power. The sound of our bodies
meeting is the prayer of all strangers and sisters that the discarded
evils, abandoned at all the crossroads, will not follow us upon ourjourney." Afrekete (Kitty) departs abruptly from the city, but theexperience leaves a strong imprint with a distinct, African mysticalquality. This encounter seems to be a source from which can flow
the elements necessary for the eventual spiritual, sexual and corporeal expression of Black womanness, a meeting of self, with love.
Connections with women throughout the book are crucial to
the strength necessary for survival in a world hostile to both Blacks
and women. As much as the reader appreciates the skillful tellingof the events, the soul of the book, Zami, is a Carriacou name forwomen who work together as friends and lovers. And Carriacou
women are African women, are Caribbean women, are Afro-American
women. Zami tells about Black women relating to other women,both Black and white. The theme of Black women's relationships
to society, family, friends and lovers is the potent soul of the book.
Lorde takes what is most common and natural between and among
Black women, the many forms of bonding, and gives it a well-deserved
focus. In delineating the sexual connections between Black women,
we hear the recurring refrain of strength that is gained from strugglethe fact that the rewards of struggle are intertwined with the struggle
itself. Gay girls, Black and white, in the fifties "dared for connection in the name of women, and saw that as their power rather thantheir problem."In the tradition of Black women, the author defies a single definition of self. In response to a question, " ... How long you been in
the life?" she responds, "For me there is only one life-my ownhowever I choose to live it." But as Lorde shows, however one
chooses to live one's life, it is moderated by certain consequences,166one of them is sex, and another one is color. Whether lesbian,straight, married, single, professional or laborer, if you are a woman
and Black, your womanness and your Blackness are permanentparts of your definition. They are marks of distinction that can extinguish you, or become power.
Zami in many ways can be viewed as a quest-for love-for
identity - for the fulfillment of the soul of a Black woman of West
Indian heritage. This pursuit is both complicated and enhanced by
her womanness, her Blackness, her capacity as a poet, her spirituality,and her love for and of other women. An enduring quality of thisbook is the marvelous way in which the writer evokes the gamut ofemotions. Readers may find the frankness with which the childhoodand sexual episodes are described arresting, humorous, painful andsad.
Much of what Lorde writes about is not just historical. Black
women, Black lesbians and Black parents still grapple with the cold
realities of loneliness, hostile acts and heinous attitudes on a daily
basis. Some readers may find the episodes "too raw, too harsh" andtherefore too painful. Some Black women may feel threatened by
the raw emotional upheaval that is provoked within themselves.
Such a reaction can lead to denial;' avoidance or negation of theway things really are. But it would be a serious mistake for Black
women not to recognize and identify with the events in Lorde's
book, or worse yet, not to have empathy or understanding.
Zami joins the ranks of classic reading about Black women byBlack women, along with Toni Morrison's Suia, Zora Neale Hurston's
Their Eyes Were Watching God, and Paule Marshall's Brown Gir~
Brownstones. Zami is a wonderfully written and very importantbook for Blacks, feminists, and students of Black Studies, Women'sStudies and life studies-lesbian and straight.

167

Myra Glazer

From Xerox Machines
to the Dreams of the Soul
A review of Keeper of Accounts, by Irena Klepfisz. Published in 1982 byPersephone Press. Distributed by Alyson Publications, 40 Plympton St.,
Boston, MA 02118. 96 pp. $5.95.

Several years ago, while studying and"writing about experiencesof separation, I came across accounts of certain laboratory experiments that left me in silent howling. One experiment entailed separating four infant rhesus monkeys from their mother, who was kept
in an adjacent cage; the infants could see, hear, but not touch her.
When a transparent screen was lowered between the cages, the infants hurled themselves against it trying to reach her; they screechedand cried. In another experiment, wire-mesh "surrogate mothers"
were substituted for the monkeys' real mothers; the researchers discovered that the infants rapidly lost interest in the surrogates andthat infant monkeys deprived of true maternal contact grow up to
be either indifferent to their offspring or, in some cases, violently
abusive. *These experiments, and others even more grotesque, have
haunted me ever since I read about them. They've lived on in mymind like the memories of watching polar bears pace back and forth,back and forth, across the concrete floor of a San Diego zoo "environment" in the summer; or the lone baby elephant standing as
immobile as a sculpture of Despair - but haven't we all witnessed
these living emblems of forced isolation, separation, entrapment?
And what do we do about them anyway?
What Irena Klepfisz does is to use images and experiences likethese as a vivid, searing basis for a series of poems all of which are*For a description of these experiments, see John Bowlby, Separation: Anxiety
and Anger (New York: Basic Books, 1973), pp. 60-74,132-127, and Ashley Montagu,
Touching (New York: Harper Row, 1971, 1978), pp. 28-33.

168

written on the theme of entrapment, of being caged into ways oflife
and moral as well as historical situations that stifle love, possibility,
and sometimes even the desire for life itself. The more I have readand thought about this book, the more powerful and moving anexperience I've found it-tender, angry, compassionate, and so c1earvoiced it has ripped me apart.
.
Keeper of Accounts is divided into four major sections. The first,"From the Monkey House and Other Cages," which could run therisk of a reader-alienating anthropomorphism, is instead brutally
alive and wrought with such emotional authenticity it affects us on
the biological level of ourselves (a Jungian might say, "archetypal,"but it is more physiologically rooted than that term implies). The
monkeys speak in their own voices:from the beginningshe was always dry though
she'd press me close
prying open my lips:
the water warm
the fruit sour brown
apples bruised and soft.
hungry for dark i'd sit
and wait devour dreamsof plain sun and skylarge leaves trunks dark
and wet with sweet thick sap.
but morning
brought back the spaceand cement her weakened
body my head against her
breast: my mouth empty.

The language works-and it continues to work throughout theseries, as she describes the perversion of the mothering ·relation ina cage:she showed me all
the space the changing
colors outside thenpulled me back forced me to sit with her
in a shadowy corner.

169

Then forced separation. Forced copulation. Pregnancy, birth, andagain separation:
the male was taken:
i turned my back.
the small one was taken:
i was held to one side.

The voice of the second monkey is shot full of the price of experience:
when they first comethey screech with wildness
flinging themselves against the walland then again against the bars .. . .
i refuse
to have anything to do with themtill they learn to behave.

"i have heard of tortures," she says, "yet remain / strangely safe,"though at night she is "torn" by her own dreams:
waking in early lightalone untouched
i cry over my safety.

This sequence lays the groundwork for the next, on "Different
Enclosures." A different kind of animal: human. Ever since Tillie
Olsen's Silences) * contemporary feminists have possessed an articulate
testament to the price paid for not having a room of one's own and a
reliable income as basic conditions for the creation of art. "How, I
wonder, did I become
what I am not?" the poet asks, and in her
I"Work Sonnets with Notes and a Monologue" she moves from xerox
machines to the dreams of the soul, through dreams of turning into
iceberg, volcano, rock and dust, back and forth between the mundane, devastating reality and the even more devastating inner lifeof a member of the lower echelon work force, never sentimental,
never self-pitying, always harsh and sharp as a laser beam. With
those caged monkeys in the background, the second sequence spreads
the theme of entrapment even wider, letting even the day-to-day
chatter in; you really feel the presence of a person, becoming aware*Tillie Olsen, Silences. New York: Delacorte Press, 1978.

170

of the breadth and depth of the woman's personality at the very moment as you feel the constricting limit of her daily life, earrfing aliving.
The third sequence searches for metaphors of this human condition in "Urban Flowers." The ritual of returning to the Brooklyn
Botanical Gardens, of experiencing "the unsuppressed spring / inthis guarded landscape"; the "Lithops," or "Living Stone" plant,that teaches the poet thatevery life
has its secret longings to transcend
the daily pressing need.

Especially in the light of the poems which follow it, the final
poem of this sequence, "Abutilon in Bloom" (abutilon = the flowering indoor maple), is particularly resonant and powerful. It's like
Emily Dickinson discerning the dandelion, the butterfly, the spider
as complicated, profound metaphors. The abutilon resisted flowering
for six years: "It would not give beyond its leaves." And thenone morning, pausing "before another empty day," the poet sees its"wild blooming":
It leans against the sunwarm glass
its blossoms firm on the thick stems
as ifits roots
absorbed the knowledge
that there is no other placethat memory is only painthat even here now
we must burst forth with orange Bowers
with savage hues of our captivity.

The remainder of the book seems to me a profound embodimentof that final directive to burst forth with orange flowers / with savage
hues of our captivity. And the captivity she explores now is that ofher own history. , Irena Klepfisz was a child of the Holocaust, aJewish baby in war-tpm Poland; she knows what hunger is, suffering,
starvation, loss, death, forced abandonment, she knows their hues,
and she transforms them into a poetry that encompasses the reader
in her experience. When her mother leaves her after a recent visit,
she writes:171

· .. Old long-forgotten departures ...
remain active in me like instinct. The fear of being
lost and never found oflosing all trace all connections
severed the thread broken. (When after two years shecame to get me from the orphanage I cried when I caught
sight of her and raised my arms to her. I was barely
three but I had not forgotten.) Of endless futile
searches for relatives long vanished or even worse
alive but not traceable.

Yes, for her, "memory is only pain," a present visit evoking theanguished abandonment of those war years. Yet I kept thinking, as
I read through these poems, of the admonition I heard often during
my years in Israel, "Lest we forget, lest we forget." Ifwe remember
with an almost unbearable anguish, we forget only by emperiling
our souls. Remembering is excruciatingly necessary; the captivity,
in everyone of its details, must be recalled. And so she does, describing painstakingly the tenuousness with which she and hermother survived the war.
If Keeper of Accounts ended here, it would already be a book ofgreat moral and emotional power. But Irena Klepfisz has more to
say, and I need to admit that the poems which follow aroused deeply
troubling memories for me, and a lot of hard thinking. I was forced
to remember a conversation I had with another Irene, also born in
Poland, on one stormy, thundering night in Jerusalem nearly three
years ago - and remembering that conversation, I was also able tosee dearly why I believe these poems to be of such importance.
I was conducting interviews for work I was doing on separations,and Irene had offered to talk with me. The two of us huddled aroundthe small gas heater in her living room, trying to keep warm on thiscold, disturbing night. We found ourselves in intense conversation.
Irene had been eleven years old, she told me, when the Germans
reached the Polish village she lived in and rounded up the Jews. She
and her family were sent to what was supposedly a "relocation camp."
She told her father that she wanted to escape, and he begged her not
to. Only by "sticking together," he insisted, could the family survive. She didn't heed his warnings, and escaped from the camp atnight-she later learned that he had been shot the next day. For theremainder of the war, she hid in the tiny, cramped chicken coop of
a Polish peasant family, lying on her back on the straw, forbidden to172move or to utter a sound lest she arouse anyone's suspicions. A
peasant woman brought her food. "I was already old when I cameout," she told me. "I was so old."
For years afterward, she wandered - back to Poland to search for.the remnants of her family, to Europe, to the States, and finally to
Israel, where she was now a professor at a University. She was divorced, and her own children were living abroad; she felt almost
doomed to be always alone. Worst of all, she felt utterly alien here,
bitterly alien, in, of all places, Israel, the Jewish homeland.
And that led to the second part of our conversation. I had left
Israel, after living there for ten years, to make a new life in Los
Angeles. She envied me. We both agreed that living among Jews
was so "stifling," that Jews were oppressively tribalistic-and weagreed, laughing, that the goyim were right: Jews are just not very
"likeable." I pointed out that, in actual fact, none of my best friends
were Jews. Irene and I were cosmopolitan internationalists at heart.
For months after that conversation, long after I returned to Los .
Angeles, the story of Irene's captivity possessed me, the thought ofher as an eleven-year-old girl having the courage to escape the campand of the torture of being locked up in the chicken coop for so many
years. It was not until I read the title poem of Keeper of Accounts
that the rest of our conversation came back to me.
Not until then did I realize how, deep down beyond the reachesof conscious intellect and emotion, Irene and I had both internalized
the image of the Jews as a despised people. That is how we saw ourselves; we despised ourselves. I had begun to comprehend my own
anxiety about being Jewish this last year or so, ever since, returnedback in the Diaspora, I was faced with making decisions about myyoung daughter's education (did I want her to go to a Jewish afterschool program? wasn't it more "cultivated" to learn French?) andalso ever since I had read Letty Cottin Pogrebin's article in Ms. on
anti-Semitism in the women's movement. Now, reading "Cherry
Plain, 1981: I have become a keeper of accounts," all the lessons I
had begun to learn were driven painfully home.
Coming after the poems describing her experience of the Holocaust, "I have become a keeper of accounts" hit me with the forceof an earthquake. It is, once and for all, "a refusal to deny." Irena
Klepfisz details, catalogues, brutally names, all that the Jews ofEastern Europe became and were accused of becoming under the173conditions of oppression: the Jew as captive. Yes, it is true, men
became "shabby scholars," "inhuman usurers," "dusty pawnbrokers,""old, heartless, dried up merchants whose entire lives were spent in
the grubby shretl streets." Yes, it is true, our women were "keepersof button shops, milliners, seamstresses, peddlers of foul fish, ofmatches, ofrotten apples ... " Nothing noble here; yes; that is what
they became; that is what their lives made them; that is life whenlife is thwarted. Irena Klepfisz refuses to deny the past, or to feelshame, or to prettify; like the oppressed Jews of the past, she, too,has become a "keeper of accounts." She remembers. She has, as I
had not, the courage to accuse.
"Who would say that I have mourned / enough?" she asks in the
final section of the last sequence, called "Solitary Acts." She has
faced the pain of captivity, the pain of her own personal history andthe history of her people-who would say that any of us who have
faced such pain with such intensity, have mourned enough? Yet,she says simply, "I need to hope / And do," and having gone throughall the poet has taken us through, we believe in this hope, this miracleof being. She has endured the nightmare of history, evoked it witha compassionate, delicate, unwavering authenticity, allowed us toknow her. Her voice will be a companion for me for a long time tocome. What a Jewish poet. What a woman. Thank you for thisbook, Irena, b'rucha ha'ba'ah.

174

Joan Nestle

There Is Nothing Easy HereA review of Nice Jewish Girls: A Lesbian Anthology, edited by Evelyn
Torton Beck. Published in 1982 by Persephone Press. Available from Inland Distributors, 22 Hemingway Ave., East Haven, CT 06512. $8.95 .
288 pp.

I cannot end without affirming as strongly as I can my deep feelings ofidentification and pride in being a Jew. It was Jews that first instilled
in me the meaning of what oppression and its consequences are. It
was Jews who first taught me about socialism, classism, racism, andabout what in the fifties was called "injustice." It is from Jews that
I adopted ideals that I still hold and principles that I still believe aretrue and must be fought for and put into practice. It was from Jews
that I learned about the necessity for resistance. It was from Jews that
I also learned that literature was not simply fancy words or clevermetaphor, but instead it was deeply, intimately connected to life, toa life that I wa;--part o( It is really almost impossible to compress
this inheritance into a single paragraph. But I know its depth andvitality, and I know that I have absorbed it thoroughly into my consciousness.
from "Resisting and Surviving America"
by Irena Klepfisz, in Nice Jewish GirlsI am not the Jewish Lesbian to write this review, I have been
saying to myself for the last three weeks. I am not a good enough
Jew; I am too much in despair over Begin's and Sharon's war in
Lebanon; I am too angry at the American Jewish establishment; I
never knew my father; I never went to Yeshivah; my mother broke
all the rules and taught me to beware of orthodoxy of all kinds; mymother and brother spent years on parole for survival-connectedcrimes, not the usual Jewish family one sees in print. But yet I knew
exactly what Irena meant. Jewishness had seeped into me in a hundred different ways, not from rituals or family celebrations, butfrom the streets of the Bronx where I was born, from the people I
met there, like Sam, the delicatessen owner, who taught me history
every time he stretched across the counter to hand me a package,175

the blurred blue numbers inching out of his shirtsleeve, from all theoffices in the garment district where my mother worked as a bookkeeper from age fourteen, and mostly from Regina Nestle herselfgambler, mistress, embezzler, mother-who found her family bypicking up other early morning workers at tired coffee countersaround Manhattan, who fought the bosses and the married ladies
who called her whore, who wrote poetry on the back of ledger sheets
and who tried to teach me love, compassion, indignation and a special
combination of humility and chutzpah, along with the deepest wisdom of all-where and at whom I should direct these twin angels.
The world for Regina was eternally divided between the bosses andthe workers, the powerful and the powerless, and to forsake the little
person was to her a major sin. So what kind of Jew am I?-not agood enough one; and perhaps this fear itself makes me more Jewish
than I even know.
''Nothing is ever escaped" was the final message of a tired sickBlack Baptist preacher to hi's doubting child, 1 and the same thought
kept pounding at me as I read page after page of Nice Jewish Girls.
This message is a hard legacy to leave for someone you love, theknowledge that all denials, all twistings and turnings will only bring
you face to face with the history you thought was reserved for someone else. But the wonder and the challenge of it all is that this legacy
is not a deterministic one. It does not dictate how we will live ourlives though it may determine how we die. It is more like a river thatflows behind us and when we turn to look over our shoulder, we see
a torrent, but before us is an empty riverbed. For the twenty-six
contributors to this anthology, all different and yet all part of Jewish
and Lesbian history, the waters have stopped for just a moment. They
turn and tell us what it is they live with, what historical memories,
what contemporary contradictions, what joys of rediscovery, what
terrors of exile. There is nothing easy here.
Evelyn Torton Beck, born in Vienna in 1933, has put together
an anthology that educates its readers in the deepest sense; personal
narratives reflecting Jewish Lesbian diversity intersect with thehistory of nations, with the international laws and actions of institutionalized anti-Semitism, with multi-cultural heritages and with
the idea and reality oflsrael. Every woman I have met who is reading the book has said that she had learned something from it, and176

when I pushed for more information, the answers given were twofold: "I learned about the factual history of anti-Semitism and I
learned about my own, how myths have taken hold without my rereally knowing it." One Gentile woman said she could not put thebook down but had to read it through all at one sitting. She spoke
as if this was her first travel guide to an exotic world. For the Jewish
reader, there will be revelations of a different sort: "God, she thinksthat too," or ''No, no, that's not what our history means," or "I didn't
know I hated myself so," or "yes, yes, I had forgotten." This anthology is a conversation most of us have never had, and it is way
past time for it.
In her provocative introductory essay, "Why Is This Book Different from All Other Books?" Evelyn Beck makes it clear that bothanti-Semitism and homophobia are attempts to make Jews and Lesbians go away: our very existence seems to cause historical problems and whole countries have created complicated political, socialand psychological schemes to make sure we stay intimidated and invisible. And just as clearly, Evi and the others in this book have refused to be good victims. But they have also done more: for themost part, they have refused to oversimplify the conditions of oursurvival and resistance. On one side is the haven of Lesbian feminism
rocky with anti-Semitism, while on the other is a homophobic homeland. For Sephardic Jewish Lesbians there is the contradiction of
being both Jewish and different from European Jews; for Josylyn
Segal, who is both Black and Jewish, there are the contradictions
posed by manipulated hatreds and 'multiple cultural cherishings. Evi
states: "The new field of women's history has ignored Jewish andLesbian experiences; lesbian history has not focused on Jews andJewish women's history has avoided the lesbian dimension." Thebook is an attempt to bring awareness to both communities-the
Lesbian-feminist and "the Jewish community at large," to replace
ignorance with knowledge and shame with pride.
The second introductory piece, from "Bashert" by Irena Klepfisz, is a poem I will never forget; in clear real language she commemorates those who died and those who survived with equal love
and wisdom. The Holocaust made neither dying or living a naturalstate: destiny (Jew-hating) and accident (where one was at a given
time or a hundred other variables) changed small everyday actions
into the history of families and of a people. 2
177

In the first section of the anthology, "If I Am Not for Myself,
Who Will Be?", Gloria Z. Greenfield, Melanie Kaye, and Irena
Klepfisz recreate journeys they took to understand the full implications of being Jewish. They also present us with the historicalinformation they recovered and a call to action to make sure the Lesbian-feminist community does not become the accomplice of a newgeneration ofJew-haters. In "Shedding," Gloria documents her trip
through Brussels, Antwerp, West Berlin, Munich (the site of Dachau,a major extermination camp), Amsterdam and London in the fall of
1981. She travels with a raw skin, having worked to peel off "illusion,
naivete and fear," and with Jewish Lesbian-feminist eyes, giving her
and us a perspective that educates and burns at the same time. Her
encounters in restaurants, streets and parking lots become unexpected
history lessons; anti-Semitism is still an everyday occurrence because,
like racism, it seems a natural thing to those who do it. The words
slip out before the speaker knows it, like the exhalation of breath.
This essay and Melanie Kaye's and many of the others in the anthology speak from the bared rock of the writers' historical andpersonal identities. There is nothing easy here.
In the next essay, "Some Notes on Jewish Lesbian Identity,"
Melanie carefully and passionately traces this reclaiming of both apersonal Jewish identity and a historical one; she takes on the stereotypes, the lessons in self-hatred, all so familiar to me, and refuses tobe scared or disinherited by them. She lists the names of the women
who fought back in the ghettoes and in the camps, reminding us ofour history of resistance. She changes gentile history into our history.
Both as Lesbians and as Jewish women we must be capable of thisalchemy or we become parodies of the hater's vision. Jewish women
have been caricatured as dark and sexually passionate; but this must
not stop Jewish Lesbian women from talking about the actual powerand complexity of their sexual selves. Both of these essays are carefully footnoted so readers can continue to educate themselves.
In the last essay of this section, "Anti-Semitism is in the Lesbian
Feminist Movement," Irena, born in the Warsaw Ghetto, asks us toacknowledge that Jew-hating exists in our movement, both among
Jews and non-Jews alike; that some of us have become very goodgirls in not drawing attention to our Jewishness for fear of earning
the labels Melanie describes: pushy, loud, dominating and bossy.
In a list of telling questions, Irena gives us a consciousness-raising178

guide for Jewish Lesbians. I probably will spend parts of the rest of
my life answering these questions, and I do not think I will be the
onlyone.
In the next section, "Jewish Identity: A Coat of Many Colors,"
Josylyn C. Segal, Pauline Bart, Rachel Wahba, Adrienne Rich,
Savina Teubal and Bernice Mennis show that being Jewish is not a
monothematic cultural heritage. One can be an Afro-Jew, an Arabic
Jew, a Gentile-Jewish Jew, an international Jew, a working-class
Jew, a non-assimilated Lesbian Jew. 3 Each additional cultural heritage complicates the authors' lives, makes more sorting out necessary,demands more holding of the lines against insidious denigrations or
seductive courtings that lead to cultural betrayals. Once again theissue of passing becomes central here, a way of surviving and of
dying that closely links the Jewish and Lesbian worlds. Adrienne,
in her essay "Split at the Root," makes clear the difficulty of selfconfrontation she had to endure in writing about this part of herself
and the lesson it taught her:
Sometimes I feel that I have seen too long from too many disconnected angles: white, Jewish, anti-Semite, racist, anti-racist, once
married, Lesbian, middle-class, feminist, exmatriate Southerner,
split at the root; that I will never bring them whole. . . . And sometimes
I feel the history of denial within me like an injury, a scar-for assimilation has affected my perceptions. Those early lapses in meaning,those blanks, are still with me. My ignorance can be dangerous tome and to others.
Yet we can't wait for the undamaged to make our connections forus; we can't wait to speak until we are wholly clear and righteous.
There is no purity and, in our lifetime, no end to this process.

And if we did find the pure voice, if there is such a thing, what would
it teach us; the writings I learned most from in this work were themost conflicted, the least self-righteous, not because I am in lovewith victimization, but like a climber who needs a pitted wall to adhere to so she may climb higher, I fall off the face of sheer resolved
cliffs.
In "IfI Am Only for Myself, What Am I?" Irena Klepfisz, Melanie Kaye and Aliza Maggid make the connections that everythingin our Jewish history tells us must be made. It is in this sectionthat I found the most compelling essay of the collection. Irena's"Resisting and Surviving America" is a cry of the heart and mind,
an expression ofIrena's horror at watching the Holocaust become a179primetime TV special while her whole being shouts this is not how
you tell the story of what happened in little streets.
The holocaust was not an event that ended in 1945, at least not for thesurvivors, not for me. It continued on in the struggle of extrem'e
poverty that we experienced in the early years in this country. It con.,tinued on and on, coloring every thought 'l had, every decision I' made. It continued on in t~e Bronx on ordinary streets, at the kitchen
table. It continued on invisible.

Irena's anguish is a fierce eye that will not accept stunted historicalvisions. "Jews have made the mistake of thinking that we all must
experience exactly the same thing; in doing so they've severed themselves from many other people's suffering and so I become angry
because, of course, I want Jews to know better, feel they should know
better and am repeatedly disappointed when the evidence shows they
are just like most people-they don't learn from the experience ofhistory." Our struggle to make sense of our history both as Lesbians and as Jews grows and changes with the decades. The Israelof the 1980s is not the Israel of the forties; Lesbian resistance in the
1980s is not the same as it was in the fifties, but Irena has given me
the mixture of emotions and ideas that I need to do my living andmy analysis-never again the shame, never the unquestioned acceptance of prevailing ideas, whether they be my people's or theestablishment's - a fierce love for what both my heritages have given
me, and a living sense of the dangers surrounding both. Because
Irena writes both about her Jewishness and her Lesbianism, she isalways risking loss. Her courage is her refusal to oversimplify.
At that moment [when her Lesbian poems are read by the straight
Jewish community] I am an outsider, a lesbian, a shiksa. The Jewish
community is not my community. But as a Jew-as a Jew in a Christian; anti-Semitic society-the Jewish community is, and will always
remain, my community. Enemy and ally.
This is the confusion. Being Jewish. Being a Lesbian. Being an
American. It all converges. It is hard to separate out. It is like feelings about one's parents. Love and embarrassment. The painful
realization that they are not perfect.

In Melanie's poem "Notes of an Immigrant Daughter: Atlanta,"
racism and anti-Semitism bring the same awareness: deaths and dying have been and still are the legacy of people who are different inthis white American world. Native Americans, Afro-Americans,180poor Americans must run for their lives. The Klan has new life;
Black children die in the streets; swastikas appear on doors. The
cross burns, calling for the deaths of the different.
All over the nation
our children are watching
to seewho we -become.

I am Jewish and my memory is long. I remember the middle passage
of slavery, the forced marches across this country's open plains, theplane flying heavy over Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the smoke of burning Jewish bodies, the guns of Sharpeville and the dying cries of aBlack man on a Brooklyn street corner. A long memory is a promiseof resistance.
The next section of the anthology is a series of photographs
by JEB (Joan E. Biren), visual comings out as Jewish Lesbians.
The women pictured, JEB, Maxine Feldman, MatHe Poor, Sapphire,
Penny Dachinger, Josylyn C. Segal, Rachel Wahba and Lillian,
make brief explanatory st~tements that once again show the varietyof our styles and the different places we have been. The section's
title, "That's Funny, You Don't Look Like a Jewish Lesbian," reflects Evi's use of humor to defuse stereotypes of both Jews andwomen.
In "Family Secrets," Ruth Geller, Martha Shelley, Elana Dykewomon, Susan J. Wolfe, Dovida Ishatova and Harriet Malinowitz
use the narrative form both in essays and poems to tell the stories of
their predicaments: the coming-out to sisters, to brothers, the challenge of raising sons in a Lesbian world, the struggle to be seen
and heard when your life gives you a different set of rituals, theordeal of going crazy because you love and desire the aunt you aresupposed to follow into marriage and childbirth, the ordeal of being
queer in a Jewish family that wants you to be safe. It is in thesenarratives that the personal costs of being both a Lesbian and aJew, a queer and a Jew; become most clear. And not only the costs,
but the dedication of trying to preserve connections while at thesame time not betr~y either heritage. For some this struggle brings
reconciliation. In a moving poem Dovida Ishatova reaches out toher mother, a survivor .of Auschwitz, exposing the fear that kept
them separate and the understanding that broughtthem home.
181

HeniaWoman of deep melancholy eyes
How afraid I was of your pain
How much you needed me
I was life to you
I was joy to you
I was proof of your victory over Hitler
I was afraid
I was so afraidof youand how much you looked to me for nourishment
I was just a little baby
and your hunger went far beyond anything I could do
You needed to love and be loved with adesperation that suffocated me

This is what history really means, events of huge proportions thatlive in our daily lives as terrors, demands, fears, separations, creating
relationships that must bear the brunt of the past. The huge movement of forces comes down at times to whom we can love and whom
we cannot.
For Elana Dykewomon, the struggle brings separation, with acommitment to build a world where Lesbian women can explore allparts of themselves, including their J ewishness, without the intrusion of male power. In her essay, "The Fourth Daughter's Four
Hundred Questions," Elana writes with an intensity of self-revelationthat makes her pain and her choices brilliantly clear. I do not mean
to slight any author in this collection by not mentioning her work
specifically; every essay, every poem proved to me how much I
needed to listen. As Elana says, "when jews together joke about
being jewish, they are finding out what each other knows, not selfdenigration, but exploration. When we joke about where we camefrom with someone who came from a similar place, we are findingout what to take with us." Every person who reads this anthology
will go through a similar process and will decide what to take awaywith them.
"Next Year in Jerusalem," the next section of the book, addresses
the joy and the dilemma that Israel poses for the Jewish Lesbian.
Evelyn Torton Beck, Shelley Horowitz, Andrea Lowenstein, Marcia
Freedman, Maida Tilchen and Helen D. Weinstock speak from avariety of experiences. Evi, in a brief introductory essay, reminds
182

us that Israel is a country of many opinions, where feminists struggle
against militarism, homophobia, racism and classism. I think it isappropriate here that the reader know my perspective. I am not a
Zionist. I mistrust all religious nation-states. I despair over Israel's
selling of guns to South Africa and to dictatorships all over theworld. I do not believe that the way for the Jewish people to survive is through the eradication of other peoples. And I say all thisknowing that America, France, Britain, Italy and Germany do thesame thing on the world market, that I am not a Jew born in Europe,that I did not see my mother rounded up by the SS. But whatever
my own feelings are, I learned from these reports from the Jewish
frontline. The essays range from the Zionism of Shelley, who madean aliyah (Jewish imigration to Israel) and now considers herself an
Israeli, "the fate of the Jewish people is tied to Israel. Zionism isthe national liberation movement of the Jewish people" - to Andrea's
diary entries written during a 1979 visit, a trip which highlighted
the difficulties of being the kind of woman she was in this new
country:
I thank you for your kindness, but chose a clear
stream running alongside.
Your unmarried daughter with her white breasts
joined me there.
You could not understand my poemas I could not live in your country.
But I thank you for your kindnessAnd for this new vision .. . .

Marcia, one of the founders of the Israeli women's movement
and one-time member of the Knesset, writes from the perspective ofa fourteen-year stay in Israel. "Lesbian in the Promised Land" is ahistory of organized feminism in Israel, a coming-out story, a sensualdescrition of the interplay between the beauty of an old land and a
newly discovered way of loving. Marcia writes with love for her
adopted country, with an understanding of the history that createdit, with an appreciation for the courage of the women who remain
there and with the sad realization that the promise of the promised
land does not extend to queers. There is nothing easy here.
In the final selection of this section, Maida brings worlds together. "Letters from My Aunt" is an exchange ofletters by Helen,a sixty-two-year-old Lesbian who now lives in Israel, and Maida, a183

Lesbian of the seventies. Helen's letters describe her coming-out inthe 1930s, touching on the DOB period of the fifties, Greenwich
village of the forties, her years as a young butch Lesbian and her
growing commitment to Zionism. The letters embody the carefulness, the respect, the joy and the love these two women experienced
in their courageous attempt to break down generational isolation.
Each letter is a gift-giving, both to themselves and to us as a community.
.
In "Cast a Critical Eye," Evi Beck, Judith Plaskow and Annette
Daum use their insights as Jewish feminists to critique bodies ofwork that are either misogynist or anti-Semitic. Evi takes on thework of 1. B. Singer, a darling of the traditional Jewish literary establishment, while Judith Plaskow and Annette Daum examine theJew-hating inherent in "blaming the Jews for the birth of patriarchy
and the death of the Goddess." Since many Lesbians are attracted
to Goddess-worship, these essays serve as good reminders that alongwith our redemption of the Goddess and the matriarchy can comevery old fears and hatreds.
The anthology ends with a wonderful glossary of Yiddish andHebrew terms used throughout the anthology. It immediately set
me to making up my own list of remembered Yiddish words thatmy mother used and I had to face the discovery that the word mensch
still means a hell of a lot to me. 4 The editor also includes an extensive
bibliography for further reading. My only addition here is that anyone doing work on Jewish Lesbians should contact the numerous
Lesbian archives around the country: many unpublished papers,
rituals, records of conferences, and letters are now available. I would
also humbly like to add my own work to the list of writers who deal
with the interconnection between J ewishness and Lesbianism. 5
In any anthology, each of us will find voices that teach us, moveus, make us lift our heads in recognition; each of us will also findpassages that grate on our own vision of life. I needed the words ofMartha Shelley, for example, in the poem "Affair with a Married
Woman," in which she tries to explain the long history of gay oppression. ''Yes, you know gay I but I need to teach you queer." Yes.
Yes. Queer and Jew. For me equal. I was saddened by the several
references to Lesbian S/M as being anti-Semitic. I do not agree. I
find more potential fascism in the statements and actions of women
who oppose this and other forms of sexual exploration than I do in184those who actively discuss and explore issues oflust and power. I
also believe that the fate of the Jewish people is as connected to thefate of the Lebanese people, of the Black Africans, of the Arabic
people as it is to Israel. As a Jewish writer, I do not accept the suggestion Evi quotes in her introduction, that "unflattering descriptions of Jews or Jewish life in literature or other artistic creations"should be avoided. Oppresion and historical insecurity as well as
personal psychology do 'sad and complicated things to people; if
anti-Semitism, like anti-Lesbianism, forces me into silence about
what I have seen in life, then I have no inner life left. My peopleboth Jews and Lesbians - cannot run scared and still be able to know
deeply who we are. This does not mean that anti-Semitism in any
art form should not be scourged, but neither will I dwell in the desertof the fear of the gentile eye.
Nice Jewish Girls: A Lesbian Anthology made several important
things very clear to me, as it did to every woman I know who hasread it. These hard clear pieces of insight may be different for eachof us, but for Jewish Lesbians one clear warning rings out: " ... ifyou had been there, you would not have been saved" (Elana Dykewomon). We will always wear the pink triangle in our psyches andeach will decide what actions, what dreams keep the most faith withthe courage that has gone before and erect the most powerful barricad~s against the forces of historical hatreds. There is nothing easy
here, but oh how essential it all is.
NOTES
1. James Baldwin, Notes of a Native Son (Boston: Beacon Press, 1955), p. 113.
2. The complete text of "Bashen" was published in SW #21, and is included in
Irena Klepfisz, Keeper of Accounts (see p. 168).
3. One note on language here. I cannot stand to hear a gentile use the word "Jew";
I have seldom heard one of them use it without hatred or puzzlement, and yet I want
to use it myself It fits the sound of other words I have come to love and fight forfern, butch, Jew.

4. Mensch: a person! acting with dignity both for self and others, but does notmean phony decorum. (My definition. Deborah Edel is a perfect example of what
I mean.)5. See, e.g.; Joan Nestle's story, "A Restricted Country," in SW #20. (Eds.)

185

Notes on Contributors

Judith Barrington is a white lesbian/feminist who writes and teaches in Portland,
Oregon.
Theresa Barry makes dances in Richmond, Virginia.
Karen Brodine is a typesetter in San Francisco. She is widely published in thefeminist, gay and left press. Her third book of poetry, Illegal Assembly, was published by Hanging Loose Press. She is a member of Radical Women and the Freedom Socialist Party.
Melissa Cannon has been writing for twenty-five years and is interested in combining lesbian/feminist consciousness and formal poetic structures. She is co-editorof the poetry journal CAT'S EYE. Her chapbook Sister Fly Goes to Market was
published in 1980 by Truedog Press.
Cheryl Clarke self-published Narratives: poems in the tradition of black women,from which the two poems published herein are excerpted. Narratives can be ordered for $5.00 (postage incl.) from Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press, Box 592
Van Brunt Station, Brooklyn, NY 11215. She publishes regularly in Conditions andis a member of the collective.
Martha Courtot is a poet, a fat woman, a lesbian mother and an activist who lives
in Santa Rosa, California.
Toi Derricotte lives in New Jersey. Her first book was Empress of the Death
House (Lotus Press, 1978). Her poems have appeared in Chrysalis, 13th Moon, Iowa
Review and Home Girls: A Black Feminist Anthology (Kitchen Table: Women ofColor Press, 1983). "Natural Birth" is excerpted from her book of the same title,
published in 1983 by Crossing Press, Trumansburg, NY 14886.
Rachel deVries is a poet and recently completed a novel, Tender Warriors, about aworking-class Italian family.
Kathy Eberly has published poetry and fiction in Focus, off our backs, Day TonightlNight Today, and Second Wave. She has a chapbook, Purgatory, in the Watch
City Poetry Series.
Rebecca Ellis is part of the St. Louis Poetry Workshop, and helps out on the staffof Naiad Press.
Patricia Fagan is working on a play, taking graduate courses at Wesleyan University, working and being mother to a 13-year-old son.
Sue Dove Gambill is a writer, presently making her living as a dishwasher in
Provincetown, Mass.
Myra Glazer is the editor of Burning Air and a Clear Mind: Contemporary Israeli
Women Poets (Ohio University Press, 1981). She lives in Venice, California, where
she is writing a novel.
Marilyn Hacker's most recent collection of poetry is Taking Notice. She edited
Woman Poet: The East and, in 1982, became editor of13th Moon.

186

Marilyn Hadfield, a transplanted 47-year-old Easterner, works in a law office in
San Francisco to make money.
Joy Harjo, Creek, is living in New Mexico and working on a play, They Went for
the Dreamers First. Her third book of poetry, She Had Some Horses, is published byThunder's Mouth Press.
Patricia Jones is a poet born in Arkansas and living in New York City. She wasco-editor of the anthology Ordinary Women and has a chapbook, Mythologizing
Always.
Gloria I. Joseph is a Black revolutionary:spirited feminist of West Indian parents,
who views the world from a Black perspective with a socialist base. She teaches
half the year at Hampshire College and the rest of the year in St. Croix, U.S.V.1.
Jacqueline LapidUS lives in Paris and works full-time as a translator. She collaborated with Tee Corinne on Yantras of Womanlave, and has a new book of poems,
Ultimate Conspiracy.
Roseann Lloyd's work has appeared in 13th Moon, Dark Horse, Contact II, Greenfield Revie'fIJ. Besides poems, she makes collages, quilts, gardens, and co-edits Sing
Heavenly Muse! Women's Poetry and Prose.
Lee Lynch is a former contributor to Ladder. "The Swashbuckler" has grown intoa novel, to be published in 1985 by Naiad Press. Toothpick House, Lee's first novel,
is now available from Naiad, and Old Dyke Tales, a collection of short stories, will
be out in 1984.
Cheiron Sariko McMahill grew up in Seattle and majored in Japanese at Georgetown University. She is now in Japan, assisting English teachers in secondary
schools as an English Fellow of the Japanese Board of Education.
Mamie Mahoney grew up in New York and has lived in New Orleans for eight
years. She has been an organizer in non-union gannent plants and is now a graduate
student in history at Tulane.
Catherine Risingftame Moirai lives on a farm in Tennessee.
Cherrie Moraga is presently living in Brooklyn, New York, where she works
with Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press. She is the co-editor, with Gloria
Anzaldua, of This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color.
Kelly Anne Munger is a student at Drake University, Iowa, where she founded
the Drake Gay and Lesbian Community and has been vice-president of the Gay
and Lesbian Coalition ofIowa.
Joan Nestle is co-founder of the Lesbian Herstory Archives/Lesbian Herstory
Educational Foundation, Inc., and a teacher of writing in the SEEK program at
Queens College, New York.
Valerie Olson is a twenty-year-old lesbian/feminist. She is a student at the University of California, Davis, involved in feminist Wicce and rides a motorcycle
named Molly B. Harley.
Michelle Parkerson is a television engineer in Washington, D.C. Her poetry
has appeared in The Black Scholar, Essence, Conditions #5, Callaloo and Feminary.
She has recently made a film on Betty Carter, and is completing a video documentaryon "Sweet Honey in the Rock."187

Jan Phillips is a wandering photographer whose work appears in The Blatant Image,a magazine of feminist photography. She has recp.ntly returned to her roots in upstate New York.
Minnie Bruce Pratt is a member of the collective that edits Feminary: A Feminist
Journal for the South. Her first book of poetry, The Sound of One Fork, is available
through Crossing Press, Trumansburg, NY 14886. She is working on a second book,
Walking Back Up Depot Street.
Joanna Russ teaches creative writing at the University of Washington. Her books
include We Who Are About To, On Sm'ke Against God, The Female Man, Kittatinny:
A Tale of Magic, and The Two of Them .
Susan Shennan is editor and founder of IKON magazine. Her most recent
books are Women Poems Love Poems and With AngerlWith Love. She has just completed a new volume of poetry, Freeing the Balance, and is working on a non-fiction
book, Creativity and Change.
Karen Sjoholm has exhibited her work since 1979 in galleries of Northern California and the San Francisco Bay Area. "My intent is to depict the journeys taken by
women toward self-definition and to give visual expression to the bonds between
women."
Beverly A_ Smith is generally optimistic living in a world not made for her, on anearth that was. She believes in the power of words, but even more in what is beyond
them.
Jean Swallow works as a secretary in San Francisco, writing in snippets when theboss is away. She grew up working at a Southern newspaper, and has been published in many newspapers, in Women: A Journal of Liberation, WIN magazine,
and Feminary.
Sherry Sylvester grew up ' in the Oklahoma oilfie\ds and currently manages aneighborhood program for the city of Portland. She is chair of the Oregon Coalition Against the Reagan Immigration Plan.
Susan Wood-Thompson grew up in Texas and now lives in New York. Her bookof poems, Crazy Qui~t, is distributed by Crossing Press, Trumansburg, NY 14886.

188

Announcements
The Crone's Nest Project: a proposed intergenerational community to provide longliving womyn with a wholistic choice; a living environment that facilitates physical,
mental, emotional and spiritual healing and health according to the methods andwants of the womyn living there; a place that honors and respects the wisdom andexperience of all womyn; and that welcomes womyn of every color, creed, economic
condition, physical ability, whether lesbian or heterosexual. The Crone's Nest is
a vision conceived but not yet birthed by the womyn of The Pagoda, a lesbiancommunity in St. Augustine, Florida. Inquiries and tax-deductible donations may
be sent to The Crone's Nest Project, 207 Coastal Highway, St. Augustine, FL 32084.
Tel: (904) 824-2970.
JOURNEY TO ANOTHER LIFE-a tape by zana, guiding you gently into relaxation, experience of your other lives. Use it by yourself or for group meditationand sharing. $10 postpaid from New Woman Press, 2000 King Mountain Rd.,
Sunny Valley, OR 97497.

Tracking Our Way Through Time: A Lesbian Herstory CaleruiarlJournal from Metis
Press, Fall 1983. A 200-page compilation of Lesbian facts, photos, quotes andgraphics documenting Lesbian Herstory. Designed large enough to use as a journal,
small enough to use as engagement calendar. $8 plus $1 postage from Metis Press,
Inc., P.O. Box 25187SW, Chicago, IL 60625.
WOMEN DO FIGHT BACK! Women Who Resist: The Women's Self-defense
Success Story Project seeks first-person accounts by women who have defended
themselves against physical or verbal attack, for 1985 anthology. Send doublespaced
typed manuscript to: SUCCESS STORY PROJECT, P .O. Box 7320, Santa Cruz,
CA 95061.

Words and Women. We are writing a book on how the words we use covertly
intertwine violence, sexuality, misogyny and objectification. We want your ideas
on words to include: those used against us and those used by and for women; andsuggested books or articles on women in language. Chiquita Rollins or Mary
Taylor, 4202 W. Denton, Phoenix, AR 940\9. (602841-8179.

189

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Announcement
With this issue, SINISTER WISDOM will again change hands.
Michelle Cliff and Adrienne Rich, who took on the magazine in
1981, will be passing it on to Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz andMichaele U ccella, the new editors.
New Address: P.O. Box 1023, Rockland, Maine 04841.

· SW 24

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