SINISTER WISDOM 25

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SINISTER WISDOM 25
Editors and publishers: Michaele Uccella and Melanie Kaye / Kantrowit z

Typesetting and layout: Edith Morang and Helga Manning
Volunteer Workers: Cindy Lanane, Sherrill Brittain, Mitzi Lichtman
Crane Willemse, reader for cassette edition distributed by
the Womyn's Braille Press
Printed by Iowa City Women's Press, Iowa City, IA
Bound by A Fine Bind, Iowa City, IA
ISSN: 0196-1853
Cover drawing 'Birds oj a Feather, by Tata Andres, pen and ink
SINISTER WISDOM, founded 1976
Former Editors and Publishers: Harriet Ellenberger (aka Desmoines)
and Catherine Nicholson (1976-81)
Michelle Cli ff and Adrienne Rich (1981-83)
Copyrighl Sinisler Wisdom. All righl s reserved III individual aUlhors and arli Sls .
Suhscriplion Rale : I yea r = 4 issues
Indi vidual. $13
Oul or u.s .. $15 (U .S . dollars)
In slilulional. $25
Hardship $6 Suslaining. $35 a nd up
Free on reques l 10 women in pri son and menIal in s lilUlions

ANNOUNCEMENT:SINISTER WISDOM POSTER CONTEST: submit designs,
preferably for black & white reproduction; winner receives royalties
from sale of poster (& t-shirts) deadline: June 1, 1984

SINISTER WISDOM

P.O. Box 1023

Rockland, Maine 04841

Contents
2 Notes for a Magazine • Michaele Uccella & Melanie
Kaye/ Kantrowitz
4 Drawing, pen & ink • Sudie Rakusin
5 Creek. Elaine Hall
12 Restricted Wing: 1968 (from a novel) • Maria Stecenko
23 Cinturon. Maria lannacome Coles
26 Kaddish. Melanie Kaye / Kantrowitz
31 4 poems: White Point, Permafrost , Alcoholic, Dustdevils &Preverbal Choirs • Gretchen Cotrell
34 Who Is Your Mother? Red Roots of White Feminism •Paula Gunn Allen
47 From Battered Wife to Community Volunteer: Testimony ofa Welfare Mother • Juana Maria Paz
53 Like Old Rags • Gretchen Pullen
54 2 poems: Marie's Poem, Violations • Phoenix
57 Her Name Is Helen • Beth Brant
60 I've Paid My Heavy Dues • Ruchele ZeOeh
63 Homewrecker. Arline Zimmerman
67 Women's Poetry Readings: History & Performance (Part I)• Katharyn Machan Aal interviews Judy Grahn
77 Photograph, Darquita and Denyeta in Park • JEB
78 2 poems: How Does You Love Me, Sweet Baby?, Lady
Godiva • SDiane Bogus
81 Exmatriate. Jacqueline Lapidus
85 from Tales of a Lost Boyhood • Linda Smukler
86 Photograph, Baltimore Dykes • JEB
95 Poem & Story: Visitation of the Icon, A Letter of Apology to
Ms . Alice • Dorothy Love
102 Regret: A Night Poem • Katliaryn Machan Aal
103 Photograph, Moon Forest • Beth Karbe
104 Love Poem. Amanda Powell106 2 poems: Thoughts During Rape: Beirut and New York City,
Sabra Hagar • Jill Drew
108 Drawing, pen & ink • Anita Bigelow
110 Ariel's Song • Susan Stinson
112 Drawing, pen & ink, Greenham Common • Beverly A 'Court
113 Pictures from Seneca: A Jew Riding the Edge • Helena
Lipstadt
117 from The Dinosaurs Could Come Back •Root
123 Contributor's Notes
126 Announcements~

Notes for a Magazine
We bring to SW a triple passion: for women, creativity, andliberation. And we had thought to write here about weighty subjects,
the future of lesbian publishing, the state of the movement, our projections for this magazine passed along to us like a temporary but
demanding child. But, as happens to many mothers, we discover the
sheer labor is so much and so unexpected, that we are left racing toprepare this final bit of copy for Edie Morang, our already overly
generous typesetter, and Helga Manning, our patient layout artist.
And besides we have this morning realized that we have accepted-and announced we were printing in SW 25-about 50 pages
more copy than will fit into the 128 pages of our absolute limit. Given
this lack of both time and space, theory withers away and a few mundane words need to be said .
We thank our readers, especially those who subscribe, forwelcoming us as the new editors. We thank Catherine and Harriet,
Michelle and Adrienne for, in their separate grapplings with S W,
shaping this creature we now inherit to love, tend, feed and be fed to,until it's time to pass her along. Catherine and Harriet, for the lesbian
imagination that was certainly in them to see'SW into existence andthrough five years of production; Michelle and Adrienne, for working
to expand the base of writers and artists who send S W work to include
many women of color, so that the work which comes to us, which wehave been privileged to read - some of which we are honored to print
here"":" is so richly diversified and compelling. We thank Beth Brant
for, first of all, working to produce SW 22123-A Gathering of
Spirit-and for continuing that work by sending to us-as to IKON,
where she is officially a contributing editor-such fine writing by
Native American women, like the poetry of Gretchen Cotrell andElaine Hall which we are proud to present in this, our first issue. And
we thank the artists who sent us work, for the substance of the work,for the reminder of how much needs to be said, and of how deeply art
can move, instruct, and inspire.
And how little of it we are able to print. 112 pages (our originalplan) sounded infinite at first, but, even when expanded to 128, hold
far less than we imagined. We ask your forbearance and look forward
to printing in SW 26 the following work which we had planned to include in this issue: Pegasis Touch's extraordinary essay on incest "Stories My Body Tells" -, Annette Kennedy's play about the court
martial of Navy dykes, poetry by Melanie Perish and Lisa Simon, art
2

work by Katie Seiden, Sandra DeSando and Sharron Demarest,
Though this issue contains no book reviews, we will be publishingthese in future issues. In addition to traditional reviews, we will be experimenting with a new format of a fiction review column and apoetry review column, each of which will cover several new titles; thecolumn format should allow discussion of more of the many new
books hungering for attention and should also make for interestingreading. For the next two issues (or so), the fiction reviewer will be theversatile SDiane Bogus, whose poetry appears in the pages that
follow; the poetry reviewer will be Irena Klepfisz, one of the founding
editors of Conditions magazine.
Finally, we want to acknowledge another kind of debt: to theother lesbian and feminist publications which inform ourgeographically scattered communities; connect our spirits; give our artists something so essential we, in this last decade, almost take it for
granted, a vehicle with which to reach an audience. These publications, often with an explicit commitment to publish new voices, have
expanded the circle of creating women. We feel this debt with particular emphasis at the end of this difficult year 1983, as several
publications fold or have announced that they may be folding:Feminary (Durham, NC), Lesbian Inciter (Minneapolis), Dinah (Cincinnati), What She Wants (Cleveland), Maenad (Gloucester, MA),and Womanspirit, one of the oldest and widest reaching of ourpublications. We recognize the loss this news portends, to the various
women's communities, and to the artists and thinkers already facedwith too limited opportunities for seeing print. At this time it seems
especially important that those publications which remain be sturdy
enough to survive; and responsive to the communities we serve. We
will try, during our time with SW, to make her-like a gooddyke-both tough and sensitive .
Michaele Uccella
Melanie Kaye / Kantrowitz

3

Sudie Rakusin

4

Elaine HallCREEKI am an Indian .
I never saw an Indian
until I was twenty-two years old
except the Indians on T. V .
except the Indians in my family.
I never saw an Indian
until two years ago, one year ago
when I looked in the mirror
and an Indian face looked back at me.
We are shadow-people.

In 1836
in Alabama and Georgia
we melted into the swamps .
My family melted into the Oakmulgee Swamp in Alabamaand stayed until the days of terror were overstayed until the death march to Oklahoma was overstayed and married Black and white
until
it was reasonably safe to be Red
again .
Then, my family emerged as "poor white"sharecroppers
passing whites .
We had a secret. And the secret was
who we were
and why we looked different
and acted different
and thought different
and felt different.
We were strange. To ourselves and to others.

5There are people in my family who
genuinely don't know why
we are different.
There are people in my family now
who really aren't that different anymore.
There are people in my family whoknow who we are.
And I am one of them.
Somewhere, my mother's family
and my father's family
are related.
How was never explained to me.
My father doesn't even have a birth certificate.
Paperson that side of the family
have a way of disappearing.
Wherever I've asked questions
I've been met with shrugs
off-handedness.
The Indian has been admitted to (rarely)
and then quickly discounted "It happened a long time ago .""Sure we got Indian blood, but that don't matter now."
There are people in my family
who have the odd habitof marrying other shadow-Indiansof preferring them to more "conventional"
white folks.
But it doesn't matterthe point is, legally we're whiteand in the South that means a lot
though we are only partiallywhite.
We are also Red.
We are also Black.

6

Sometimes, my blood wars.
I can hear voices screaming in my veinsRed voices, Black voices, white voiceswhy can't they marry and sing together?
The poiR-t was
we weren't Black .
In Alabama, that meant we were safe.
Hell, it was fashionable to claim
Indian blood .
All the white folks I knew in school did
always at least an eighthalways Cherokee.
But none of them looked like me .
None of them was called names
snickered at.
knowing looks hidden behind notebooks
paper sneers .
None of them were shunned like I was shunnedand some of them were as poor as we were
and their daddies made moonshine
and their mamas slept aroundbut my family was held up for ridicule .
Was it because we were dark
and quiet?
Was it because our eyes and skin and hairglowed with secret fire?
I was taught never to ask these questions.
I was punished for being loudmade to stay out of the sun
so my skin wouldn't get too dark
had to torture my unruly hair into submission.

7

And the message was clear.
"Don't be like your daddy's folks. So poor and meanand hard-drinking and cynical.
Outlaws. Savages. Be like mama's people instead. '.'Good and clean and virtuous and thrifty
and honest and God-fearing.
And white.
The Indian beaten out of them .
So, I pacified my rebellious blood
got religion
made good grades
but I couldn't change how I lookedor how I thought or felt
and final ly, I couldn't act anymore.
So I moved away.
I left Oakmulgee, left Alabamaand moved to California.
Three years ago I went back home to visit
and my mother gave me, as a gift of parting,a photo album.
Photographs.
A record of us shadow-Indians .
The ones that disappeared .
My lover, who is a Black woman, had pointed
out to methat severa] people in my family
didn't look white at all.
"Shit , " she said, "I grew up withplenty of people
who looked as white as you and your folks."

8That was the beginning. I asked
questions and was met
with endless evasion .
But then, what did I expect from people whoare passing?
passing for over a hundred years
from the time when to be Creek, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Cherokee,
or Seminole
meant confiscation, rape, imprisonment,
exile, starvation,
death.
And I was born in a time
when to be Black
still meant those same things .
So what did I expect? An honest answer?
But I questioned. And the answers
were most informative
the fear that lay under the reticenceand pretended ignorance.
I talked to my first cousin about it.
She married a rich doctor and sends her kids
to a private school.
Her sister became a Mormon and had to do afamily genealogy.
My cousin claimed she didn't know what
her sister found out.
But she knew.
I asked and I read and I manged to piece out
a skeleton of an identity
the way my Grandma pieced a quilt
from scraps of cloth.
My family is French and English and Dutch
my family is Afro-American
my family is Native American
Creek.
Creeks, rivers, lakes, and swamps
are in my veins.
Spanish moss
threads its way through my brain ..

9

In Alabama history class I read about
the Creeks I read about Menewa and the Battleof Horseshoe Bend
I thought they were talking about somebody else's people.
Some Creeks hid in the swamps, and fought
and starved and lived so far away from "civilization"that no one noticed them after a while .
They became known as Alabama and Georgia"Cajuns."
They were Native American. They were Creek.
They lost their language, their customs, their religion
they lost everything but a fierce loyalty
to each other and the land .
For over two hundred years the Creeks survived
every attempt the Spanish, French, and English
and" Americans" made to steal their rich lands
until the Indian Removal Act of 1832
beaten in battle and intrigue
whites playing one against the otherset upon by gangs of opportunist
white patrols
the forerunners of the Ku Klux Klan
driven from their towns
their crops destroyed
the women raped, the old men
beaten, their children stolen andsold for slaves, the young men
murdered.
The whites setting Creek against
Cherokee. Chickasaw ~gainst
Choctaw
until. . .. .
begging bread in the streets offrontier settlements that had once been their towns
they were driven through icy rivers, throughchdlera epidemics, through hunger and fear and madness.
whole families in chains . .. to Oklahoma.

lO

Except for the ones that got away
the ones that don't officially exist
in any census report.
Yes, I am Creek.
The terror and hatethe bitterness and rage
crawl under my skin
like the snakes I dreamed each summer.
Those rivers and streams snake through my bloodand I also live in exile now
but in my dreams
I live in Alabama, in Oakmulgee,
in a little placesituated between the Alabama River and the Cahaba River.
Remembering things I never knew
prophecies and doom-sayings as realas the riddle the crows used to challenge
me with in my grandfather's cornfield
as real as the buzzard circling in a blazing
Alabama sky.

I did not die.

IIMaria Stecenko
Restricted Wing: 1968
Though my real name is Katerina Alexandrovna Ryabakobila,
and I call myself Katie Greymare, my friends have always called me
Mush. Now don't you think that amounts to a fair number of nameS
to choose among?
Take my word for it, it doesn't suffice.
There always has been and always will be some kind of asonofabitch waiting to lurch out at you from behind the wings and callyou al) altogether different sort of name; the sort that'll pull the blood
down out of your head - as though your blood were a big red rubberband - pull it taut, and snap it flying down into your heels, and leave
your heart sucking on a vacuum.
The first thing you want back after an event like that, Jack, isyour blood .
And where are you going to get it?
Why, out of the sonofabitch's neck, that's where.
People who claim they just don't understand about violence
make me want to laugh. Where have they been? On Mars? Or living insome big white house set back behind a mile of green, green trees?
Maybe so. But that leaves an awfully wide world in between, which iswhere most people live, including me. Yet when they're not busy
framing lies about their virgin mothers, you will find a good numberof people speechifying against violence, as if it truly were some test
God had devised to separate the angels from the apes instead of what
it is: the helpless shudder of the blood at mortal insult. I'm seventeen .
I understand about violence fine. Why doesn't anyone ever ask me to
explain?
"Speaking of names," Minna says, "what do you suppose you
are saying about women when you call men sonsofbitches?" (Asthough that were remotely near the point.)"Women are sonsofbitches too," I reply. "They just can't hit as
hard as most men."
A look - as though a baby squirrel were being skinned alive infront of her eyes - crosses her face, and I feel a rush of pleasure, as
though, in that instant, I were both the baby squirrel and the one
doing the skinning, and were the possessor of an inhuman power - afaculty of cruelty so astonishing, I must reserve it only for myself.
12'Surely she must feel the power such cruelty gives me? I look at her
again, to see whether she recognizes it and see, instead, as if a mirror
in her eyes had tilted two or three degrees, pity - pity at the holyterror that I am , a look which pulls me, suddenly, out to the edge ofmyself, out to the brink of where the space yawns between us, andmakes me feel as if I were about to get up out of my chair - get up
and do something very important; as if, in another moment, I weregoing to clamber over the wall of some old longing-. And then the
moment passes . It hangs for a moment in the air while my heart thuds
into my side, and then I slide my eyes away and light a cigarette. It's
enough . It has to be enough, because, if you're like me, you've longsince learned that what you want and what you aren't going to get are
twins, joined together at the hip at birth and meant to travel to thegrave as one . You've learned that hope, the instant you awaken him,
wakes up his ugly brother Ralph ; who, grabbing up a length of pipe,
hightails it to the pass, always in time to cut you off.
What it is Minna believes I believe, I don't exactly know . Maybe
she thinks I never got the painted horse for Christmas, or enoughribbon candy to eat; maybe she knows I sometimes feel as if I'm a
standing column of air, not even footprints to mark where I'mstanding; but she coaxes me, coaxes me - saying, everyone, sometime, has felt the bite of doubt; a little or a lot; with great consequence, or small; from just below the chin, or from the level of thegut; or even, dizzyingly, up from the invisible footprints of the feet,swaying like a column, air leaning into air .. . . But what she calls
doubt, I know to be a certainty. Not knowing how to tell her this, I
make a joke. "If doubt bore fruit," I say, "this could be the Gardenof Eden all over again." And smile.
Sometimes I am awakened in the middle of the night and shaken
by the remembrance of how close I came to walking away . A shudder
seizes me, as if I were trying to throw my own flesh off my bones,
shake off the sense of self-betrayal as if it were some stranger's coat.
But my flesh stays put, and encloses me in a terrific heat. I would give
anything, right then, to run away, but the ward is sealed. So I place
the palm of my hand, like another seal, over my heart. I line up thefingers of my hand along the bones of my ribcage and seal the outlineof my palm over my heart, as if I were trying to reach into a cage andtouch the head of a frightened animal . And I lie still.
It was not my mama who called the police . As far as I know, she's
never dialed a phone by herself in her life, anymore than she's evergone to a store alone, or buried her own dead. While he was still alive,
my papa would dial the telephone for her, and only then would she ap13

proach the thing, distrustfully, Hah?Hah?-ing maddeningly into thesteep electronic well of the mouthpiece, as though she'd just been
handed an instrument from hell and had to scream into it out of pureself-defense. Neither would she have gone next door, to Ru's house.
So she must have had to hustle a good ways up the block looking for alikely candidate, and it was probably Tante Deutsch, in the end, who
lived seven or eight houses up the street and baked and gave away fruit
cakes at Ch.ristmas, who called the cops. Tante called the cops andthey called an ambulance, and when the attendants came swarming
into the narrow bathroom of our steep-staired house, they found me
jack-knifed over the commode doing some pretty serious Hah-Hahingof my own, two bloody fingers down my throat in unconscious imitation of my mother's phone technique. I had had a change of heart
about the pills I had taken and was doing my best, in my own way, toremedy the situation . But what the cops and the attendants simply
failed to grasp , was that my mama had summoned them to her rescue;and even as she wailed and gesticulated wildly in their faces, they
strapped me into a stretcher and hauled me down to Our Lady Of The
Sacred Blood Of The Lamb, to have my stomach pumped. I hoisted
myself up onto one elbow as the ambulance began to pull away andsaw her through the rear window, following in our wake, toiling
angrily back up the block toward Tante Deutsch's house, and mylaughter, for I had t;)'een laughing, I couldn't help it, died in my throat.
Neighbors who had drifted or been yanked out of their houses by thecommotion stood in little cross-armed groups on their porches orlawns, looking wan in the failing light, watching my mother toil up thestreet in her slippers and housecoat, and as we pulled away I felt thatthey were all receding into ~omething more than distance, more thantime: that they were prisoners of a particular quality of light, and I
would never have to see that light again .
And I might not've. If I had put my luck to use, I might never've
had to see it again. I might've been gone - pelting away into the highbrush, pulling all traces of myself in after me, like the rabbit disappearing back into the magician's hat.
But I didn't keep my head. And the bandages they put on myhands were my undoing. At Sheep's Blood - for we called it that they swabbed and bandaged my hands. They threaded a skinny little
rubber tube up into my nose and down into my belly and put the otherend of it into a pan on the floor . Then they pulled a white curtain on
an overhead rod across the room, to shut me in, and rubber-soled it
down the hall, to the next emergency. I started pulling the tube out
right away. I would have done so anyway, but my attending physician,14

Doctor Kildare, gave me additional inspiration. There were people in
the hospital (he'd said, jamming the tube into my nose) who actuallywanted to live! Tears sprang into my eyes . My sinuses hummed like astruck tuning fork . He had better things to do (he said) than cater tomy self-pity . The lip of ~he tube probed the soft part of my palate, hitting it once, twice, three times before sliding over the hump and down
into my throat. He was like a little steamed-up bull, dark-haired,showing red at the nose. While he fussed over a tray of instruments,
and I lay back picturing him as a caterer, a nurse swabbed andbandaged my hands . They were shallow cuts, needing no stitches.
How did they decide who got to do what? I wondered, and pictured
them outside the door, flipping a coin: "OK, you do the hose thistime, I'll get the hands." The nurse threw me little mollifying looks
behind DOctor Kildare's back, as if she really cared about the kind ofimpression they were making up there at old Sacred Sheep's Blood.
Before she finished, he left, without another word, and she must havefelt pretty bad about the way he'd acted, because she gave a dramaticsigh and told me, shaking her head, that he'd lost an old man with abad heart that night and, not forty-five minutes later, a four-year-old
girl whose hand had disappeared into the blades of her daddy's combine . She'd died from shock, the nurse explained, not loss of blood,
although she'd lost more than half the blood in her body by the timethey'd gotten her into the hospital. I tried to let that make me feelbetter about the little bull doctor, but all it did was make me feel likehell about the little girl.
Every minute or so, my stomach gave an involuntary heave, andmore stuff would patter into the pan set on the floor. She made twolast passes with the scissors, and left me with a wide X over each palm
and a neat cuff at each wrist. The minute the white curtain closed
behind her, I started pulling the tubing out. It didn't feel good. It felt
as though I were pulling one of my own veins out through my nose.
When that sharp little lip jabbed me in the tonsils again, I almost gaveup; but if I didn't do it myself, the Savior of Mankind would be backto do it to me, so what was the difference? I yanked it and it came out
with a pop, like a soda bottle being uncapped. Then - like an idiot I began to undo the bandages. All I had to do was put my hands in mypockets and stroll out of there, but I began to undo the bandages, giving up on one hand and going to the other til I had made a bloody
mess, and suddenly thinking, leezus! somebody's going to be in here
any minute!, I grabbed for the white curtain and nearly pulled it off
the rod. Suddenly, I was having one hell of a time standing up. I held
onto the curtain and followed it to the end of its rod. That took me to15

the door. I staggered out into the corridor, trailing bloody gauze
behind me like Tut the Mummy. Halfway to the back door I barrelled
into a gurney, setting the IV bottles swinging and jangling, and fell on
top of the little old man who was lying there on his back, tubes
running out of him crazily, out of every hole God had put in his body.
I looked him closely in the eye . His sap was all gummed up. His look
told me so . I was sorry . I was sorry I'd fallen on him, too . Why, helooks more tired than me, I thought, and then I began to think about
how really tired I was. I felt so tired. I felt myself beginning to fold
like a column of dough and topple sideways, away from the gurney. A
hand seized me by the collar and lowered me to the floor. It seemed
miraculous to me, as though I were in the grasp of a crane from outerspace, but it was only the nurse who had bandaged my hands. She
gave me a look half sorrowful and half dirty. Before long, we were all
reunited behind the white curtain again (no longer very white, since I'dswung on it), Doctor Kildare, Nurse and I; hose, scissors, swabs just like old times. He'd gone beyond whatever anger he had felt
against me and worked with silent, dogged efficiency, never hurtingme once. The nurse, on the other hand, put extra english on the needle
she inserted into my hip . I nearly cried out, but her eyes were veiled
and she held her mouth like a small fist, clenched against any protest I
might make, so I remained silent. During the night, I don't know
when, they strapped me into another stretcher, swung me into anotherambulance, and brought me here. They hadn't known it, but they'dbeen going to bring me here all along. Mama had pulled the rabbit outof the hat.
The next time I opened my eyes, Minna was standing over my bed
like some kind of a goddamned vision. After I had taken her in, I took
the deepest breath I had taken in months . I must have been full ofdrugs, because she looked wreathed in that kind of unearthly lightthey use to photograph Doris Day or Jesus in the movies. Just lookingat her, though, I knew she would never say anything stupid . She was
wearing an open lab coat over her clothes . Her eyes were blue. They
rested against you easily. Their look was steady . Not the kind ofsteadiness that rides you - trying to get you from one place toanother - but like a steady light that you can read by when it's dark .
It was not a look you'd ever feel you had to shake off, or slide out
from under. She was tall, or seemed to be from where I lay . She hadbrown curly hair and her face was full of high color, as though she hadjust come in from a long walk among the fallen leaves. I'm not hiding
how good the sight of her felt to me. If it makes me a fool, I guess I
can bear it this one time. I didn't want to fight against what felt likepeace.
16

And even so, I've asked myself: "What if Minna is crazy because
she treats me like I'm not?" I can't bring myself to believe she is,though; I suppose she's only kind. It's frightening to be the recipientof her kindness.
Some people - when they're afraid they might be going nuts are afraid of hearing voices. Not me. I happen to know that somebody
out there is listening. I've always been afraid of being overheard. But
Minna says, "Keep talking, Mush . If we keep talking, there's a goodchance we might both be out of here by May." May is when Minna's
service rotates and she has to leave for the Vet's Hospital downstate.
About the same time, my case comes up for review before the hospitalboard. But that is still light years away. Outside, the snow is hip deep.
Everything alive is locked and frozen down.

***

Mama does not visit me. Ru does. Ru says mama doesn't comebecause the hospital frightens her, in which case it's just as well she
stays away. I do hear from her, but hef'letters don't exactly qualify as
news: "My dearest Katya, I have one foot in the grave and you arepushing me with both hands." Chatty stuff like that.
Ru's real name is Ruth Silverberg. For years, we have lived nextdoor to her and her husband Dave and their pathetic little retardedkid, Aaron. In fact, Ru got her name because Aaron could not say"Ruth." He calls her Mu or Ru, Mu for momma. What with Ru coming to visit me and all, I've been doing a lot of thinking about Aaron.
It makes me feel like hell, but I just can't find any soft spot in me forhim. If they put him away somewhere, would I go visit him as Ru doesme? No. He puts my teeth on edge. He always has, the way he goessneaking around and bursting into tears over nothing. But it make;s mefeel like hell - that I could no more like Aaron than I could fly
backwards through a ring of flame. And, right away, it brings my own
mama to mind. What if that's all it is, between me and her? That I hit
her the wrong way - the way Aaron hits me? Wouldn't that besomething?
The "library" here is very big on Reader's Digests and National
Geographics; also the complete works of Sir Walter Scott. The food's
really not much worse than what it was in the high school cafeteria:
the powdered mashed potatoes taste like tin; the green beans come outof giant, gleaming cans and squeak like something alive when you bite
into them. If you stand your fork up in the gravy, it'll stand at attention until yo u take it out again. Nothing terrible. But because she does
not feel about me the way I do about Aaron, Ru takes a bus downfrom Malone every second or third Sunday, and comes trundling into17

the dayroom with an overstuffed box in her arms . The box contains
food and books. Smiling, half-frozen, she unhitches herself from thebox with a grunt. The lenses of her steamed-up glasses look like twocold winter moons hovering around her bony face. Once they've unfogged, you can see the sorry combination of mournful and glad she
wears when she first comes in. Her homely, high-domed face hitches
up into a smile that starts falling before it even reaches her eyes. It's
never occurred to me before to wonder how old Ru is. I wonder it
now.
Today, in a greasy paper bag perched on top of her box, she hasbrought me a barely warm, oniony cheeseburger and an icy chocolate
malted. While I rustle around half-heartedly inside the bag, Ru pulls
off her over-size mittens - red, with purple reindeer running after
each other along the knuckles. One of the mittens has a hole near thetip, which is fraying badly. The whole thing will come undone if shedoesn't do something about it soon. She's wearing a pair of green ear
muffs over her head scarf, a shade of green you'll never see outside thediscount basements of department stores. The fur isn't real. It sticks
up in sorry little peaks, like the pelt of a stuffed animal left out in therain. I've never seen Ru without her head scarf. She wears it alwayson account of her religion, and her head, supposedly, is bald.
Sometimes I've imagined what that must look like: her smooth highforehead going up, and up, and up ... all the way around to the bones
in back of her ears.
Ru sinks her mitten less hand deep into a pocket of her plaid
mackinaw and pulls out a white envelope with a blank face. Holding
the envelope out to me, waiting for me to take it, she says primly,"Your mama said to say you're in her prayers." I take it from her andput it in the pocket of my jeans. Later, I will bring it out, turn it overin my hands, and tell myself: "Throw it away." But I will open it
anyway. My eyes will slip and slide down the same old terrain, looking
for any outcrop, something that's never been there before. And then I
will either crumple it up and heave it away, or I'll just let it slide, frombetween my fingers, to the floor. That's when it feels the best: when I
just let it slide, as if from its own weight, to the floor - meaning no
more to me than a hole turning itself inside out.
The box Ru has brought is full of books. It kills me. She neverreads herself, only looks through old almanacs, atlases and encyclopedias; but she rummages around in the used book stores along
Joseph Avenue and brings books for me. Half the books in the box
are battered old Zane Greys, well-mauled paperbacks with broken
spines and chewed corners. These are good; someone in them will18

always be throwing himself up on horseback and riding hell forleather. The smell in the box wafts up and hits me in a place just below
the center of my chest. It's not really like smelling food, butsomething about it is like that. Next, there's The Black Stallion andCrime and Punishment, both in hardcovers; then, another paperback, Hot Rod, by Lowell Jamieson. This one features a cover with ablond, crew-cut boy scowling behind the wheel of a turquoise convertible. Underneath that, yet another paperback, by someone called Rod
Hammer, called Marooned. Under the blood-red letters of the title,
four men and a half-naked woman huddle around a crumple-nosed
plane on a vast desert floor. This one will be good for the sex . I passover it quickly. The last three books in the box are By Love Possessed,
Jude the: Obscure, and The Red Book of Fairy Tales. Ru catches mysmile as I heft this last one out of the box and allow it to fall open at acolor plate in my lap. She tucks in her chin and aims an answeringsmile at the wall behind my right shoulder, leaving me to catch theedges of her satisfied look, glimmering like moonlight from along theouter corners of her eyes.
Then I take another bite out of my thawing burger and dredge
around in the bottom of the malted with my straw, making the kindsof noises which would get you thrown out of just about anyplace else .
Not here. The duty nurse just throws me a sluggish dirty look. No
wonder. It's unbelievably hot in the day room. The radiators clankand hiss like senile dragons and people stagger from one side of theroom to the other, like flies bumping from pane to pane in a hothouse.
My jaws ache from yawning.
Ru has settled herself down on one of those blond wooden chairsthat weigh about a half a ton, and pulled her mackinaw down aroundher shoulders, like a stole. She believes this will prevent her fromcatching pneumonia. There's a ragged lake of water around her feet,where the snow she carried in has melted and run.
"I saw a pretty funny thing today," she says, looking down into
her cupped hands where they lie tamely in her lap. Ru fingers her wedding band. Her hands are long. Her fingers look dully polished; they
gleam like candle wax . She moves the loose ring easily along the joint
between two knuckles.
"Oh?""Yes," she says. "It was a pretty funny sight, all right. I let Sargeout for his run, this morning, like I always do. It was barely light,
cold. Air felt good, though. The porch was clear of snow, so I steppedout for a breath."
She laces the fingers of her hands and presses her palms down on
19

the little pot of her belly, letting the silence stretch.
"Well," she says , "instead of taking off, like he usually does, hestopped in his tracks in front of your house, and started in to digging
at a drift."
Well, what is the wonder of that, I think, and glance at her face.
But the wonder of it is there, on her face, and her eyes, behind theblurry lenses, look alarmed.
"So?"
Ru unclasps her hands. They reach out for the chair arms, which
aren't there because the chair doesn't have any, and she gives a little
stagger of surprise, recovers and folds her arms under her breasts.
"So it wasn't your everyday snow drift," she says, and lets thesilence stretch a little bit again, as if to give me a chance to come clean,
to let on that I've known all along what she's been talking about. But I
don't so much as stir.
"That snow drift was full of silverware," she blurts. She strains
forward in her seat. "All the silverware in your mama's house," sheadds, "unless I'm crazy and your mama's rich."
It's not fair. I almost laugh out loud at Ru, because puzzlement
and alarm are trying to pry one another off her face, and neither oneof them has a ghost of a chance of winning. It's just not fair.

***
Minna says she thinks I'm afraid to talk.
I am afraid, but that's not the only thing.
It's that you can't count on words. There aren't two words leftthat I can put together about myself anymore with any kind of hopethey're going to stick. They have a way of sliding apart and leaving a
mess. I'm not stupid, I know words are what I'm writing here; but it
doesn't matter. It's like looking at the inkblot they showed me the firstweek I was here. Or reading mama's letters: "I love you, Katya. I hateyou." They slide apart. The inkblot looked harmless, at first. Just twoheads, facing one another. "Well, why do they want to show me
this?" you wonder. Then, all of a sudden, as if your eye went out
from under you, you find you're looking at a vase instead; one bigvase, filling up all the space that used to be between the faces. It's
enough to make you dizzy. You know the faces are still there, but it'salso as if they never existed - they've disappeared so cleanly, in theblink of an eye. All you can see is the vase. If you stare hard enough,the faces will come back. And after a while, after you've gotten thehang, you can start going back and forth, between them: faces first,
vase next, faces, vase, faces, vase, faces, vase ... . But it's not what
you want . What you want is to see them together, all at once, two20

faces and one vase. Together. Well, you can just forget it. You can sit
back, relax and forget all about it, Jack, because you never will . You
will go back and forth, seeing one after the other, faster and faster,
until they become a blur, until you're sick and dizzy and want to diebut you will never see it whole . And that is how I feel when Minnapresses me to talk . I've said so! It's not as if I've held it back!
"Like what?" she asks .
"As if - no matter what / say, the other half, the half thatcounts, is what you know, and will not say. Not to me.""About you?"
I nod.
"What do you think I know about you, Mush, that I won't say!'''she asks in a hushed voice .
And just like that, I start to back away, but I feel heavy, like anincredibly clumsy beast who ha.s been tripped by the sound of her
words, and panic catches at my heart because I'm falling now - falling deep into the space between the faces and the vase, deep into that
nothing place that can't be known ...
"Mush," she repeats, "what do you think I know about you that
I won't say?" Something feels like it's torn loose inside my chest,
under the ribs . It's crawling around in there faster and faster, climbing
up and down my ribs like a monkey in a burning zoo . And yet, I feellike a stone, sitting in front of Minna with my elbows rooted into myknees. The need to say something rises in me like water behind a dam .
I've got to say something soon . I'll be sorry if I don't say somethingsoon. But if I do say something, I'll probably still be sorry . So I just sit
there like a fool, holding down the floor with my feet and wishing the
air would swallow me. Water, stone, air.
"Hey," she says and leans toward me and lays a hand on myknee .
For a crazy moment, I think: "What if I didn't have to besorry?" But her touching me has made me want to cry. And if that's
not feeling sorry, what is? Inside of me, it feels as though a burning
ladder were falling over onto the floor.
She gives my knee a little shake.
"Breathe," she says .
Shame at my own stupidity runs through me like a flame. I haveforgotten to breathe . When I pull the air into my lungs, it feels as
though I were inhaling a bunch of rusty tin can lids. My tongue tastes
metallic. I grope through my pockets and light a cigarette. I am so
grateful there is still something I can do. I can smoke . I sit back . I
blow a plume of smoke through my nose . I gaze past Minna, through21the wire mesh on the window, to the window's ledge - where oldsnow rests like a sleeping cat on the sill. When half the cigarette isgone, I finally reply, "What you really think - is what you'll neversay .""Look at me, Mush," she says.
But I can't really meet those eyes right now, not for more than asecond. They just stay there. Even when I'm not looking, I can feelthem not going away.
"I don't think that you're bad," she says.
That crawling feeling starts up again immediately, as thoughsomething were treading with its feet at the very center of my chest. I
flick my eyes at her, just for a second, and suck in another lungful ofsmoke. There's sweat on my upper lip and an inch-long column of live
ash in my hand.
Maybe she doesn't think I'm bad. It doesn't matter. 1 don't thinkso either - not all the time. But something thinks it; something a lot
bigger than Minna with her wide blue eyes, or me, or both of us
together; and something doesn't like what we are doing here. Minnadoe~n't know what she's asking for. She doesn't have any idea.
Outside, hip-deep in snow, trees are swaying from side to side in amonotonous wind. My mind goes out to them, to the pure geometryof the snow. Sycamore, 1 think. Yew. Laurel. Oak. Tetrahedron.
Water, air, fire, stone. 1 take it back - words are good for something .
When Minna speaks again she sounds a little tired.
"Why don't we try this, Mush," she says. "Why don't we eachwrite down our half?"
Half right, you're down, 1 think immediately. Right down yourhalf. Half your down, right?
"Mush?"
I know what she is getting at. She's saying she will be the faces,
and I can be the vase . Or the other way around. I guess it doesn't matter which is which. But 1 don't have to kid myself. 1 will not pretend.
Whatever she decides to show me, it'll only be what she wants me tosee.
"Do you want me to write about what happened with the knife?"
I ask.
"I don't want you to write about anything you don't want towrite about."
When I expect her to try to trick me, and she doesn't do it, it's
like finding out there's an extra step in the stairs .
"What do you want me to write about," 1 ask sullenly.
"Why don't you make -me a list," Minna says. "Make me a list of
the things 1 know about you, but won't say."~22

Maria Iannacome Coles

Cintur6n
for Victor Fragoso

As an amusement park about to close
for the season, New Brunswick holds a festival,celebrates its new tomorrow, say the posters.
A new street opened on the old Main Street
which has been made to destroy itself
in this urban renewal.
There is no good way of telling the painful
not with the grace of the Spanish you spoke.
Today, it was borrowed togive me more to understand;our incomplete poetry translations,
all the first drafts of poems
you never returned to,times you could not be found,
all the silence that surrounded you
for all that space,
as if you were studying
how friends might act
with you not there,
the chiseled paleness of your faceas you spoke an explosive avowal
incapableof touching that paleness, that blackness
in your eyes.

23Finally, clearer than hindsight,
your predecessor's wanderings,
Julia's footsteps on years too hard for imprints.
She too despised your history
written against you
by conquistadores through centuries,
the new nation of Puerto Rico,
Estado Associado Libre.
You had come here to die
as Julia De Burgos did. She, an unknown
in Bellevue where her poems of clenched fists
and desperate love were more reasonsfor electric shock.
She
raved on in Spanish
with more music, not less,escaped, died in the endlessnessof the streets of New York
where another Hispanic woman can die more alone. 'At thirty-seven you died alone because
you kept your fatal secret.
In this brilliant day,when the extravagant sounds of the festival,of the jazz and latino bands are shadowedby the colors of the trees,.by leaves floating upon the waters of the Raritan,
your frail imageof the gray day I last saw youcomes unopposed.
Of course it was raining.
You wore a black raincoat
buttoned all the way to your chin,a black umbrella over you
framed your almost white hair.
The uncompromised black of your eyes andyour faint smile
appeared to fatigue you.

24

What mad journey brought you to diein the heart of the place you most despised,
to write poems in Spanish
to New York, to spill your fluid word s onto
the time of al/ parched things
Lorca took a share at that time 's
metallic suffering
but left.
You came here to stare into the eyes of your enemy
and just as you began,from the first word you wrote,
as you sang it ,as you acted it out in plays,
as you played it,
the knowing that made your telling true,
had started to wear the minutes
from the profundity of your eyes.
The knowing continues to gather the ashesof those who most long,
who fight with most intimate weapons,
who calculate each day,bathing themselves, their songs
in all the need left
by invading powers.

Cil1luron mea ns "sword-belt " a nd "series of th ings th at surro und ano th er ". Victor
Fragoso was a poet a nd a tireless worker for Puerto Ri can independence. Julia De
Burgos (1914-1953), one o f th e grea tes t a nd mos t loved Pu ert o Rica n poets, lived in prerevoluti onary Cuba for several years, and was associated with th e C ub an st ruggle fo r
libera tion as well as with the movement fo r Pu erto Rica n ind epend ence. After leav ing
Cuba, she ca me to New Yo rk where she was hospitalized in Bell evue, escaped , di ed o n
the street s, and , a month la ter, was rescued from anonymo us burial in Po tter 's Field
and returned to the to wn where she was born, Carolina. Victor and I had started totransla te her book Cancion de la verdad senciffa befo re his illn ess struck . the time of a ff
parched thin gs is a lin e fro m the grea t Spani sh poet Garcia Lorca .

25

Melanie Kaye/ Kantrowitz

Kaddishand when I told the woman-a survivor, a fighter in the Warsaw
Ghetto Upri sing-about the Holocaust conference in Maine, and how
man y of the people there had known nothing, she said , Th ey stillknow nothing.

*
Yisgadal v'y iskadash sh 'me rabbo,
b 'olmo deevro chiruseh v'yam/ick
lIlalchuseh

if I said kaddi sh for each one
if I were to mourn properl y
I wo uld not be done
If I were to mourneach a rti st seamstress schnorrer midwi fe bakereach fiddler talker tailor shopkeeper
each yente each Communist each Zionist
each doctor pedlar beggar Bundist rabbi
each prostitute each file clerk each lesbianeach fighter the old woman in the photograph from
Hungary holding the hand of the child whose
each Jew
socks droop

b 'chayechol1 II vyo-lIlechon, u v'chayeyd 'chol beys y isroel26

I would not be done yet
it was more than death was more the people's
heart a language I haveto study to practice speaking withold people songs to collect transcribingfrom records or from the few
who know a culture which might have diedin this country which eats culture a death
we call normal
a culture astonishingin its variety a taste a smell a twist of songthat was Vilna

OdessaCracow
Covner-Gberna
Warsawthese were once Jewish sounds*
baagolo uvizman koreev, v'imru omen.

Tuesday my father died Wednesday
the rabbi who never met my father met with us
my mother my father's sisters the daughters
5 minutes before the funeral was to begin
to prepare the eulogy He asked
if my father had belonged to any organizations if
people from his place of business had comeand he said since there were no sons
he would say kaddish for my father
and I did not tell the rabbi my father was broken
before he died I did not describe his twisted bodyin his lungs I did not explain my father worked
6 days plus 2 nights a week paid
for my eyeglasses cavities penicillin shots
I did not say he joined no temple

27

asbestos

I did not say he loved the sound of Yiddi sh but
wo uld not speak it
I did not mention he beat us the children
but not hi s wife I did not reveal hi s high point in life
a trip with hi s buddies to the Chicago World's Fairin a ' 32 Ford I did not sa y he changed his name he was
Kantrowitz he became Kaye I did not say he built
a business retail and taught menever cross a picket line
Y'he sh 'lIIeh rabbo 111 'vo rac/7 I 'olalll
ulolllley ollllay o
I did not tell the rabbi
to a ll things Jewish

my father li stened carefully

nor did I tell him

save your prayers
I said , I will speak allhislunerala nd I did to mourn him prope rl y*v'yespo-ar v'yisromam v'yisnase/7
v'yishador v'yishal-Iol
he taught me all men are equal before I knew
to suspect the words before I learned
to fight with him to say people all

people daddy

and please don 'I say

girlsh 'lIIed d'kuc/-sho b'reech-hu
About Hitler I always knew
Chanukah we lit candles sa id
no prayers but got presents red swea te rs ball bearings
no son gs but Halik vah played on the menorah likeit was our song
I knew I belonged to Jews
I knew I was part of Israelsang

I 'elo min col birchoso v'shiroso
lushb 'choso v'nechemoso daamiron28

and so I do
and so I am
and so when I heard about children womenfamilies shot stabbed at the table in Shatilla
Sabra I couldn't breatheand I was almost too afraid to mournlet me be plain
Jews sent up flaresfor christians to kill by
let me absorb
yes they are men soldiersalso, my people my father loved
all things Jewi shand should I disown?
I who will be blamed with the others again
let me mourn if anythingis holy flesh
so readil y torn from the skeleton
let me rock my body like a scared chi ldof what sk in what tongu e which people?
whose child is this?
the answer says if the child shalllive die suffer kill
let me be st rong as hi sto ry
let me join those who refuse
let there be time
let it be possible
b 'ollila v'illlru olllen. Y'he sh '10 111 0 rabbo
lIIin sh'lIIayo

let no fac tion keep mefrom those who su ffer
let no faction keep me from those who needed a hom eand found one
let no faction keep me from those
who need a home now*

29

v'chay im olenu v'al col y isroel.
lI'imru omen.
and in Rome where Jesus the dead Jew is raised
again st us
as in Kansas or California
a synagogue blown up for being a Jew placea baby blown up for being a Jew baby
in shul for the high holy days

Oseh sholo/ll b ill1 rare v, hu 'ya-aseh
if there 's a Jew ali ve if a sin is always Jewish sin
paid again nothing is ex piated there isblood in the ca mps th e bulldozers com e to pushbodies into h iding thi s is what men doGemayel is received a t th e UN with a ppl a use
thi s is the Jew ish problem

thi s ba bym y fa ther loved a ll things J ewi sha culture

astonishing in its variety

was

if I were to mourn prope rl y
I would not be do neshalom olenu v'al col israel. v'imru
omen.
1983
kaddish , Jew ish prayer fo r the dead , la nguage: Ara m a ic. schnorrer, a mooc her
yen te, a goss ip , someo ne who has to put her two cent s in a ll th e t ime
Bllndist , member of the Jewis h socia lis t o rgani zat io n Hatik vah , lit. , " ho pe"; th e
Israeli nat io na l a nt hem Cell/ayel, P res id en t of Leba no n , hea d o f t he C hri sti a n
Ph a la nge P a rt y
No te: A ll poems have sources, bu t wit h some, th ese so u rces a re so imm edi a teth a t it seems o nl y right to name them . Kaddish came to me !"i rst thro ugh th e wo r kof the Argentini a n J ew Ma uricio La nsky, a n a rt is t whose seri es o f p rin ts d epicts
si mpl y a nd with ext rao rdin a ry bea ut y face after face; eac h print has a number li ke
a co ncentra ti o n cam p ta ttoo. A lso cru cia l was Irena Klep !"isz's lo ng p rose poem
Basher! (p u bli s hed in SW 2 1 a nd in he r book Keeper of Accounts ). J acobo T imerma n 's The UJII/ies t War: Israel In Lebanon ta ugh t me to be mo re a fra id o f sil encetha n o f how speec h will be used again s t Jews. T he m a n y-face ted Israeli peace
movemen t gives me necessary in spi ratio n a nd co urage .

30

Gretchen Cotrell

White PointIs this what it is where the green hills walk& the white water surrounds us like mermaids

Does it start with a slow ship passing
Where two islands meet like a woman her legs parted
Head thrown back in the white water
Breaking like angels on fishermen
Is it this mad shimmer
That pulls you irrevocably beyond
How can you believe it after so much gone
For mermaids & the grammar of water
Lillies of fog
Breath of the MotherFirm & thick in the rough coat of the headland
After all the weeping & refusal to weepThis ship passes passes passes
In the beginning it is an island
With three palms sailing backward
You do not know it is your ship
Now it is before you
Moving & returning
In the isthmus at the center of vision

31

Gretchen Cotrell

Permafrost
And I come home stillto an empty house. Don't kiss me . Don't speak.
There are too many sounds. The preverbal forest callsin the cosmopolitan streets. You find yourself
sitting at a bazaar giving away your furniture.
A woman approaches with a stethoscopeat the end of a small shovel
listening for the tap dance of radiationon the path to the testing groundfor the hard breath of a woman
stumbling barefoot up Second Avenue in the snow
for the frenzy of women who wait for language to include them
who reach for one another knowing woman
is an island strong with birds & totem poles
standing back from shore in the ancient pines .
I've sat & watched you sweep your porch now for weeks
drifting with the wild horses of the aurora
the kildees & crows of dark winterlight.
This is the eerie tundra that man leaves to the wolves .

Alcoholicthe years gonein earthquakes of booze
bad food & silent men
she comes smilingthrough tooth stumps
shrugging her ragged coatlike a mild winter & the stars
go grieving round the poles

32

Gretchen Cotrell
Dustdevils & Preverbal Choirs
Winters in the Flathead we used to study the nightfor satellites
We could hear the beep
the red light
A mile away the dissonant coyotes paced the marble cold
Good fortune to see the insistent gold thread
sewing itself to the blue dark
Time stretches over Los Angeles like a sheepskin coattoo shortshrunken at the sleeves
Hopethese third-floor nights that you will not wake up
until February drifts like paper on the windy rocks
You place your words in my hands
like a sack of oranges into the cooler
a dream of your parents sculpted by beryllium
The Eskimo have no word for radiation
They call it poison in the wind
All Power to the People of Yellowknife

33Paula Gunn Allen
Who Is Your Mother? Red Roots of White Feminism
At Laguna Pueblo in New Mexico, "Who is your mother?" is an
important question. At Laguna, one of several of the ancient Keres
gynarchical societies of the region, your mother's identity is the key toyour own identity. Among the Keres, every individual has a place
within the universe - which includes human and non-human - andthat place is defined by clan membership. In turn, clan membership isdependent on matrilineal descent. Of course, your mother is not only
the woman whose womb formed and released you - the term refers inevery individual case to an entire generation of women whose psychic
and consequently physical " shape" made the psychic existence of thefollowing generation possible. But naming your own mother (or her
equivalent) enables people to place you precisely within the universal
web of your life, in each of its dimensions: cultural, spiritual, personaland historical.
Among the Keres , who are my mother's and grandmothers' people, 'context' and 'matrix' are equivalent terms, and both refer to approximately the same thing as knowing your derivation and place.
Failure to know your mother, that is, your place and its attendant
traditions, history and place in the scheme of things is failure to
remember your significance, your reality, your placement on earth
and in society. It is the same as being lost - isolate, abandoned, selfestranged , and alienated from your own life . And this notion of theimportance of tradition in the life of every member of the community
is not confined to Keres Indians; all American Indian nations place
great value on traditionalism.
The Native American sense of the importance of continuity with
one's cultural origins runs counter to contemporary American ideas:
in many instances, the immigrants to America have been eager to cast
off cultural ties, often seeing their antecedents as backward, restrictive, even shameful. Rejection of tradition constitutes one of the major features of American life - an attitude that reaches far back into
American colonial history and which in present times is validated byvirtually every cultural institution in the country, and feminist practice, at least as it shows up in the cultural artifacts the community
values greatly, follows this cultural trend.
The American idea that the best and the brightest should willingly34reject and repudiate their origins leads to an allied idea - that history,
like everything in the past, is of little value and should be forgotten as
quickly as possible. This all too often causes us to reinvent the wheel
continually. We find ourselves discovering our collective pasts over
and over, having to re-take ground already covered by women in thepreceding decades and centuries . The Native American view, whichhighly values maintenance of traditional customs, values and perspectives, might result in slower societal change and in quite a bit lesssocial upheaval, but it has the advantage of providing a sturdy senseof identity and lowered levels of intrapsychic and interactive conflict.
Contemporary Indian communities value individual members
who are deeply connected to the traditional ways of their people, evenafter centuries of concerted and brutal effort on the part of theAmerican government and its allied institutions - the churches andthe corporate business system - to break the connections between individuals and their tribal world. In fact, in the view of the traditionals,
rejection of one's culture - one's traditions, language, people-is theresult of colonial oppression, and is hardly to be applauded . They
believe that the roots of oppression are to be found in the loss of tradition and memory, because that loss is always accompanied by a loss ofa positive sense of self. In short, Indians think it is important toremember, while Americans 'believe it is important to forget.
There is much to be said for the traditional Indians' view, if it iswidened to mean that the sources of social, political and philosophicalthought in the Americas should not only be recognized and honored
by Native Americans, but should be implemented in American society. If judicious modeling of the traditions of the various native nations
was practiced in the Americas, the place of women in society would
become central, the distribution of goods and power would be
egalitarian, the elderly would be respected, honored and protected as a
primary social and cultural resource, the ideals of physical beauty
would be considerably enlarged (including "fat," strong-featured
women, grey-haired and wrinkled individuals and othe~s who, in contemporary American culture are viewed as "ugly. ") Additionally, thedestruction of the biota, the life-sphere, and of the natural resourcesof the planet would be curtailed, and the spiritual nature of humanand non-human life would become a primary ordering principle ofhuman society. And if the traditional tribal systems that are emulated
include those who have been pacifist since "time immemorial," war asa major ordering principle of human society would cease.

35

Re/membering Connections and Histories.
The belief that rejection of tradition (as well as of history) is a
useful response to life is reflected in America's amazing loss ofmemory concerning its origins in the matrix and context of Native
America. America does not seem to remember that it derived its
wealth, its values, its food, much of its medicine and a large part of its"dream" from Native America. It is ignorant of the genesis of its
culture in this Native American land, and that ignorance helps toperpetuate the long standing European and Middle Eastern
monotheistic, hierarchical, patriarchal cultures' oppression of
women, gays and lesbians, people of color, working class andunemployed people. Hardly anyone in America speculates that theconstitutional system of government implaced here might be as mucha product of American Indian ideas and practices as it is of colonial
American and/or Anglo-Europe~n revolutionary fervor.
However Indians are officially and informally ignored as intellectual movers and shapers in the United States, Britain and Europe, they
are peoples with ancient tenure on this soil. During the ages when thetribal societies existed in the Americas largely untouched by patriarchal oppression, they developed elaborate systems of thought that included sciences, philosophy and governmental systems based on abelief in the central importance of female energies, systems that highly
valued autonomy of individuals, cooperation, human dignity, human
freedom, and egalitarian distribution of status, goods and services .
Respect for others, reverence for life, and as a by-product of thisvalue, pacifism as a way of life, importance of kinship ties andcustomary ordering of social transactions, a sense of the sacredness
and mystery of existence, balance and harmony in relationships bothsacred and secular were all features of life among the tribal confederac
ies and nations . And in those that lived by the largest number of theseprinciples, gynarchy was the norm rather than the exception. Thosesystems are as yet unmatched in any contemporary industrial,
agrarian, or post-industrial society on earth.
Grandmother, The Old Woman Who Thinks Creation
The name by which the tribes and nations refer to the greatest
kind of woman-power is "Grandmother" or "elder woman power ."As the Keres remember (celebrate) our origins, "In the beginning,
Thought Woman thought all that is into being." By this, they don't
mean there is a beginning in the sense that first there's nothing andthen there's something, but that at the source of our particular lifesystem a creation / power/ being who is female in the kind of energies
she possesses and expresses gave life to all that we know by the expe36

dient of thinking it/ us. They mean that she did and does that, and thatwithout her thought nothing would exist then or now .
The Iroquois trace their origins to the descent of Sky Woman,
who gave birth to a spirit daughter. When that daughter died giving
birth to her twin sons, Sky Woman flung her body into the sky where
it became the moon and hung her body on a tree near her lodge where
it became the sun. For so powerf'..il was the spirit woman's being thateven in "death" she continued to live. (And of course this myth expresses the Iroquoian idea that death is a change of state rather thanan end, as well as their view of women as primary to life on earth .)In ancient Meso-America, the Grandmother power was
Gucumatz, the Feathered One, who thought and meditated and spokewith her cohorts . She was later to be called "Quetzal" - anotherword that designates the same bird and, by extension, the same ritualforce . This being later became known as Quetzacoatl, the feathered or
winged serpent among the Aztecs who were by all accounts a latterday people descended of more ancient peoples. One of their major
deities, Quetzacoatl, reflected the masculine shift that was beginningto take place in the western hemisphere about the time the Aztecs
descended into the valley of Mexico and began building theirmasculine-oriented system. 1 It appears that Quetzacoatl combines in
his person the earliest female deities , Gucumatz and Cihuacoatl, or"Bird Woman" and "Serpent Woman" (who might both be better
understood if called "Eldest Female Spirit Who Circles Above" and"Eldest Female Spirit Who Meanders Within"). In essence, the title ofthis best known Aztec deity, Quetzacoatl, reflects a female nature , forthe highest Aztec deity, whose original identity (all but lost in thepatriarchal ages since her coming) was Grandmother .
Changing Woman, as the Grandmother power is known among
the Navajo, does just that, she changes. Ancient crone, seductive
maiden, mature woman, mother , creator, grandmother, mistress ofthe sun, she wields the powers of Creative Thinking to the ends thatbest meet the needs of the universe of people, spirits and othercreatures . According to an account recorded by Gladys A . Reichard,
Changing Woman and her sister, Sand Altar Woman, were the sole inhabitants of this fourth or fifth world and made it safe for the humanbeings who eventually came here from the previous world . 2
Like Changing Woman, Hard Beings Woman has the ability tochange from young woman to old crone . And, in the words ofHamilton A. Tyler, " ... as every Hopi knows, the world was createdby Huruing Wuhti, Hard Beings WomaT!." 3 This creation-goddess isreferred to as Spider Woman among the Hopi, and as creator she
37

possesses many of the attributes of the Keres Thinking Woman, who
is also informally known as Spider Woman . She is most often seen as
the agent of human welfare and the benefactor of those who havegood hearts and think no evil in their hearts . Often she is thechampion of those who are weak, helpless, oppressed or suffering.
Speaking of goddesses with creative potency, the Zuni tell of
Shi'wano'kia who "expectorated into the palm of her left hand andslapped the saliva with the fingers of her right, and the spittle foamed
like yucca suds, running over her hand and flowing everywhere; andthus she created A'wilelin Si'ta (Earth Mother).'"On the Plains walks White Buffalo Woman . The director of wind
powers, the significator of the quadrants, directions, seasons andsolstices, she gave the sacred medicine pipe to the Lakota, and with it
the rules for how they should be a people, and how they should live
within their traditional tribal mind . She is the heart of the people, thepsychically-charged center that gives their being as a people its structure, meaning and vitality . In that way she, like the Keresan Iyatiko(Corn Woman, the Mother of the katsina, the people and the animals
and plants) or the Navajo Changing Woman, is the center of thepeople, the true source of their power to live and to prosper.
These are only a bare hint of the sorts of female gods that wererecognized and honored by the tribes and nations, but even such a
brief account indicates that femaleness was not devalued among them.
Rather it was highly valued, both respected and feared, and social institutions of every sort reflected this attitude . Even modern sayings,
such as the Cheyenne statement that a people is not conquered until
the hearts of the women are on the ground, reflect their understandingthat without the power of woman the people will not live, but with it,they will endure, and they will prosper.
Nor did they confine this belief in the central importance offemale energy to matters of worship . Among many of the tribes(perhaps as many as 700/0 of them in North America alone), this belief
was reflected in all of their social institutions. The Iroquois Constitution or White Roots of Peace, also called the Great Law of the Iroquois, codified the Matrons' decision-making and economic power.
For example, Articles 19,44 and 45 provide:The lineal descent o f the people of the Five Fires [the Iroquois
Nation s] shall run in the female line. Women shall be considered the progenitors of th e Nation . They shall own the land and the soil. Men andwomen shall follow the statu s of their moth ers. (Articl e 44)
The women heirs of the chieftanship titles of the League shall becalled Oiner or Otinner [Noble] for all time to come. (Article 45)
If a disobedient chief persists in his disobedience after three warnings

38[by his female relatives. by his male relatives and by one of hi s fell o w
council members . in that order). the matter shall go to the council of War
Chiefs . Th e Chiefs shall then take away the title of the erring chief byorder of the women in whom the title is vested. [M y emphasisl When thechief is deposed. the women shall noti fy the chiefs of the League . . .a nd
the chiefs of the League shall sanction the act . The women will then sel ect
another of their sons as a candidate and the chiefs shall elect him. (Article 19)'

Beliefs, attitudes and laws such as these resulted in systems thatfeatured all that is best in the vision of American feminists and in
human liberation movements around the world . Yet feminists too
often believe that no one has ever experienced the kind of society thatempowered women and made that empowerment the basis of its rulesof civilization. The price the feminist community must pay because it
is not aware of the recent if not contemporary presence of gynarchicalsocieties on this continent is unnecessary confusion, division, andmuch lost time. Wouldn't it be good for feminists to know that there
have been recent social models from which its dream descends and towhich its adherents can look for models?
The Root of Oppression is Loss of Memory
An odd thing occurs in the minds of Americans when Indian
civilization is mentioned: little or nothing . As I write this, I am keenly
aware of how far removed my version of the roots of American
feminism must seem to those of you steeped in either mainstream orradical versions of feminism's history. I am keenly aware of the lackof image or information Americans have about our continent's recent
past. I am keenly (keening) aware of popular notions of Indian
women as beasts of burden, squaws, traitors or, at best, vanisheddenizens of a long lost wilderness. How odd then must my contention
seem: that the gynocratic tribes of the American continent provided
the basis for all the dreams of liberation that characterize the modern
world.
We as feminists must be aware of our history on this continent.
We need to recognize that the same forces that devastated the gynarchies of Britain and the Continent also devastated the ancient African
civilizations and we must know that those same materialistic, antispiritual forces are presently engaged in wiping out the same gynarchal
values, along with the peoples who adhere to them, in Latin America.
I am convinced that those wars have always been about the impositionof uncontested patriarchal civilization over the wholistic, pacifistic andspirit-based gynarchies they supplant, and that to this end the wars ofimperial conquest have not been solely or even mostly waged over theland and its resources, but more, they have been fought within thebodies, minds and hearts of the people of the earth. This is, I think,39

the reason traditionals say we must remember our ongms, ourcultures, our histories and our mothers and grandmothers, forwithout that memory, which implies continuance rather than
nostalgia, we are doomed to extinction.
The vision that impels feminists to action was the vision of the
grandmothers' society, that society that was captured in the words ofthe 16th Century explorer Peter Martyr nearly four hundred years
ago. It is the same vision repeated over and over by radical thinkers ofEurope and America, from Fran<;ois Villon to John Locke, from
William Shakespeare to Thomas Jefferson, and from them to KarlMarx and Friedrich Engels, from Benito Juarez to Martin Luther Kingand from Abigail Adams to Elizabeth Cady Stanton to Judy Grahn,
from Harriet Tubman to Audre Lorde, from Emma Goldman to Bella
Abzug, from Malinalli to Cherrfe Moraga, and from Iyatiku to me.
That vision as Martyr told it is of a country where there are "nosoldiers, no gendarmes or police, no nobles, kings, regents, prefects,
or judges, no prisons, no lawsuits ... All are equal and free," or soFriedrich Engels recounts Martyr's words.
Columbus wrote:
Nor have I been able to learn whether they [the inhabitants of theisland s he visited on his first journey in the New World] held personal
property, for it seemed to me that whatever one had, they all took shareof. .. They are so ingenuous and free with all they have, that no one
would believe it who has not seen it; of anything that they possess, if it be
asked of them, they never say no; on the contrary, they invite you to shareit a nd show as much love as if their hea rt s went with it. 'At least, that's how the Native Caribbean people acted when thewhites first came among them; and American Indians are often thedespair of social workers, bosses and missionaries even now becauseof their deeply ingrained tendency to spend all they have, mostly onothers. In any case, as the historian William Brandon notes,. . . the Indian seemed free, to European eyes, gloriously free, to theEuropean so ul shaped by centuries of toil and tyranny, and this impression operated profoundly on the process of history and the developmentof America. Something in the peculiar character of the Indian world gave
an impress ion of c1asslessness, of propertylessness, and that in turn led toan impression, as H . H . Bancroft put it, of "humanity ... unrestrained ..
in the exercise of liberty absolute. '"A Feminist Heroine
Early in the Women's Suffrage Movement, Eva Emery Dye, an
Oregon suffragist, went looking for a heroine to embody her vision offeminism. She wanted an historical figure whose life would symbolize
the strengthened power of women. She found Sacagawea ("Saca40

jawea") buried in the journals of Lewis and Clark. The Shoshoni
teenager had travelled with the expedition, carrying her infant son,and on a small number of occasions she acted as translator for the expedition. 8
Dye declared that Sacagawea, whose name is thought to mean
Bird Woman, had been the guide to the historic expedition, andthrough her work Sacagawea became enshrined in American memory
as a moving force and friend of the whites, leading them in the settlement of western North America. 9
But Native American roots of white feminism reach back beyond
Sacagawea. The earliest white women on this continent were well acquainted with tribal women. They were neighbors to a number oftribes, and often shared food, information, child-care and health care.
Of course little is made of these encounters in official histories of colonial America, the period from the Revolution to the Civil war, or on
the ever-moving frontier. Nor, to my knowledge, has the significanceof intermarriage between Indian and white, or between Indian andblack been documented and the implications of these unions explored.
By and large, the exploration of Indian-white relations has been
focussed on governmental and treaty relations, warfare, missionization and education. It has been almost entirely documented in termsof formal white Christian patriarchal impacts and assaults upon
Native Americans, though they are not often characterized as assaults
but as "civilizing the savages." Or, particularly in organs of popular
culture and miseducation, the focus has been on the imaginary
degradation of Indian women ("squaws"), their equally imaginary
love of white government and white conquest ("Princesses"), and thehorrifyingly misleading, fanciful tales of bloodthirsty, backwardprimitives assaulting the innocent and virtuous efforts of white Christian settlers to find life, liberty and happiness in their chosen land.
But, regardless of official versions of relations between Indians
and whites or other segments of American population groups, the fact
remains that great numbers of apparently "white" or "black"
Americans carry notable degrees of Indian blood. With that blood hascome the culture of the Indian, informing the lifestyles, attitudes andvalues of their descendents. Somewhere along the line - and often
quite recently - an Indian was raising the children of a family
designated as "white" or "black." In view of this, it should be evident that one of the maJor enterprises of Indian women in America has
been the transfer of Indian values and culture to as large and influential a segment of American immigrant populations as possible. Their
success in this endeavor is amply demonstrated in the Indianized
lifestyles that characterize American life. lo
41

An Indian Focused Version of American History
American colonial ideas of self-government came as much fromthe colonists' observations of tribal governments as from their Protestant or Greco-Roman heritage . Neither Greece nor Rome had apluralistic democracy as that concept has been understood in the
United States since the Jackson administration, but the tribes, particularly the gynarchal tribal confederacies , did .
It is true that the oligarcal form of government that colonial
Americans established was originally based on Greco-Roman systems
in a number of important ways, such as its propertied-white-maleonly-need-apply-for-citizenship structure, but it was never a form that
Americans as a whole were comfortable with . Politics and government
in the United States during the Federalist period were also reflective of
the English common law system . However, they reflected it as it had
evolved under patriarchal feudalism and monarchy - hence theUnited States' retention of slavery and restriction of citizenship topropertied white males .
The Federalists did make one notable change in the feudal system
it derived from . They rejected blooded aristocracy and monarchy .
This idea came from the Protestant revolt to be sure, but it was at least
reinforced by colonial America's proximity to American Indian confederacies and their concourse with those confederacies over the twohundred years of the colonial era. It was this proximity and concoursethat enabled the revolutionary theorists to "dream up" a system inwhich all local polities would contribute to and be protected by a central governing body responsible for implementing policies that bore on
the common interest of all. It should also be noted that the Reformation followed Columbus' contact with the Americas, and that his andMartyr's reports concerning Native Americans' free and easy
egalitarianism were in circulation by the time it took hold .
The Iroquois federal system, like that of several in the vicinity of
the American colonies, is remarkably similar to the organization of
the federal system of the United States . It was composed of local,"state, " and federal bodies composed of executive, legislative andjudicial branches. The Council of Matrons was the executive, that is,
it instituted and determined general policy. The village, tribal (several
villages) and Confederate councils determined and implemented
policies when they did not conflict with the broader Council's decisions or with theological precepts that ultimately determined policy at
all levels. The judicial was composed on the men's councils and thematrons' council, who sat together to make determinations. Because
the matrons were the ceremonial center of the system it can readily beseen how it was that they were the prime policy-makers.
42

Obviously, there are major di fferences between the contemporary
governmental structure of the United States and that of the Iroquois.
Two of those differences were and are crucial to the process of justgovernment. The Iroquois system was spiritually based while that of
the United States is secular, and the Iroquois had the female as executive. The female executive function was directly tied to the ritualnature of the Iroquois politic, for the executive was lodged in thehands of the Matrons of particular clans that functioned acrossvillage, tribe and national lines. That office was hereditary, and onlysons of eligible clans could serve, at the behest of the matrons of hisclan, on the councils at each of the three levels . No one could impeachor disempower a Matron, though her violation of certain laws could
result in her ineligibility for the Matrons' Council. For example, awoman who married and took her husband's name could not hold thetitle Matron.
American ideas of social justice came into sharp focus throughthe commentaries of Iroquois observers who traveled in France in thecolonial period. These observers expressed horror at the great gap between the lifestyles of the wealthy and the poor , remarking to the
French philosopher Montaigne, who would so heavily influence theradical communities of Europe, England and America, that "they had
noticed that in Europe there seemed to be two moities, consisting of
the rich 'full gorged' with wealth, and the poor, starving 'and barewith need and povertie.' The Indian tourists not only marveled at thedivision, but marveled that the poor endured 'such an injustice, andthat they took not the others by the throte, or set fire on their house ..
. ' " 11 It must be noted that the urban poor did just that in the French
Revolution. It was the writings of Montaigne and of those he influenced that provided the theoretical framework and the vision that propelled their struggle for liberty, justice and equality on the Continent,
and later throughout the British empire.
The feminist idea of power as it ideally accrues to women stems
from the same source. The central importance of the clan matrons in
the formulation and determination of domestic and foreign policy, as
well as in their primary role in the ritual and ceremonial life of theirrespective nations, was the single most important attribute of the Iroquois, as of the Cherokee and Muskogee who traditionally inhabitedthe southern Atlantic region.
The latter peoples were removed to what is now Oklahoma during
the Jackson administration, but prior to the American Revolution
they had regular and frequent communication with and impact on
both British, and later, American people, including the African43

peoples brought here as slaves. Again this most important aspect ofAmerican Indian political systems does not often find its way into official discussions of their history and culture though it has beenrecorded by white historians and ethnographers on occasion .
One such, Lewis Henry Morgan, wrote an account, published in
1877. 12 This book was to heavily influence Marx and the developmentof world Communism, particularly the feminist -or women as powerfulaspects of the socialist revolution . Indeed, the very idea of socialism,that is, of the egalitarian distribution of goods and power, thepeaceful ordering of society, and the right of every member of society
to participate in the work and benefits of that society are ideas thatpervade American Indian political thought and action. And it isthrough various channels, the informal but deeply effective acculturation performed by Indian women who married into other cultures, thesocial and political theory of the confederacies fueling and then intertwining with European dreams of liberty and justice, and mostrecently the work of Morgan and the writings of Marx and Engels,that the age-old gynarchal systems of egalitarian government foundtheir way into contemporary feminist theory.
When Eva Emery Dye discovered Sacagawea and honored her as
the guiding spirit of American womanhood, she may have been wrong
in bare historical fact, but she was quite accurate in terms of the
deeper truth her discovery pointed to. The statues that have been
erected depicting Sacagawea as a Matron in her prime signify anunderstanding in the American mind, however unconscious it mightbe, that the source of just government, of right ordering of social relationships, the dream of "liberty and justice for all" can only be gainedby following the Indian matrons' guidance . For, as Dr. Anna Howard
Shaw said of Sacagawea at the National American Woman's Suffrage
Association in 1905:
Forerunner of civilization, great leader of men, patient and motherly
woman, we bow our hearts to do you honor!. .. May we the daughters of
an a lien race ... learn the lessons of calm endurance, of patient persistence
and unfaltering courage exemplified in your life, in our efforts to leadmen through the Pass of justice , which goes over the mountain s of prejudice and conservatism to the broad land of the perfect freedom of a true
republic; one in which men and women together shall in perfect equality
sol ve the problems of a nation that knows no caste, no race , no sex in opportunit y, in responsibility or in justice! May "the eternal womanly" everlead us on! ... "44

NOTES'At leas t , thi s seems to ha ve been the case, though th e appa rent shift might be a result of
Spanish Ca tholi c des truction o f all records a nd informal sou rces of in fo rmation about agynocratic system , for such wou ld ha ve given ser ious ca use for a la rm amo ng Eu ropean
po te nt a tes, na mely th e officers of the Inqui sitio n a nd th e Pope him self. The Spaniards
who were destroyin g docum ent s a ll over Latin America during th a t period were largely
int c rested in a peace ful conquest, and we re unlik ely to be willing to ack nowled ge
gy nocracy there if they were to find it. But it is int erestin g (and perh a ps not a mea ningless coincid ence), that the Aztec ritual or ceremo ni a l ca lend a r was based o n a yea r of
20 13-day months, and that that sa me 13 is , in Europe, the number of th e wiccan covens
a nd all alli ed c ultures.
, G ladys A. Rei cha rd, Spider WOlllan, A Slory of Navajo Weavers and Chanlers(Glorieta, New Mexico: Th e Ri o Grande Press, In c., 197 1) , 169-79; cf. 236 .
\ Ha milt o n A . Tyler, Pueblo Gods and Mylhs (No rm an: Uni versit y of Oklahoma , The
C ivili zation o f the American In dian Series, 1964),37 .
'Ty ler, p 94, citin g Stevenson " Th e Zuni Indian s," BAE Twenty -Third A nnual Report ,1901 -02, Washington, 1904,23-24.
\ The White Root s o f Peace. C it ed from vers io n in The Third WO ll1an: Minorily
WOlllen Wrilers of Ihe Unil ed Slales, Dexter Fisher, ed. (Bosto n : Ho ught on Mifnin,1980) 577. Cf. Thomas Sanders a nd William Peek , eds., Lileralure of Ihe Alllerican
Indian (New York: Glencoe Press, 1973), 208-239. Sanders and Peek refer to the documcn t as "The Law of the G rea t Peace."• William Bra nd o n, The Lasl A lllericans: Th e Indian in AlI1erican Cullure (New York:
McGraw-Hili Book Company, 1974),6.
, Bra ndon , 7-8. The entire cha pter "American Indi ans a nd American Hi sto ry" is perti nent to the di scuss ion ( 1-23).
, Ell a E. C lark a nd Margot Evans, SA CA GA WEA of Ihe Lewis and Clark Expedilion(Berkeley and Los Angeles: UC Press, 1979), 93-98. Clark detail s the fasci natin g, inruriating a nd very funny schol a rl y escapade of how our suffragist foremothers created afemini st hero from the sca nt references to the teenaged Shoshoni wife of the
expedi ti on's official transla tor , Pierre Charbonneau .
.. Th e implica tions of this ma neuver did not go unnoticed by either whites or Indi a ns,
fo r the stat ues of the idealized Sh os honi woman, the Native American mat ro n , sugges t
th a t American tenure on American la nd , ind eed, the white right to be on this la nd isgiven the m by her. While that impli cati on is not overt , it certainly is sugges ted in the image of her the sculptor chose: tall, heavy woma n, sta nding erect, nobl y pointing th e way
westward with uprai sed hand . Th e impression is furthered by the habit of media andschola r a li ke of referring to her as " the g uid e." Largely because of the "hype" surrounding th e circumstances of Sacagawea's participation in the famed Lewis a nd Cla rk expedition, India n people have viewed her as a traitor to her people, lik ening her toMalinalli (La Malinche, who acted as int erpreter for Cortez and bore him a son) and45

Pocahontas, that unhappy girl who ma rried John Rolfe (not John Smith) and died inEngland after bearing him a so n . Actually none of these women engaged in traitorous
behavior . Sacagawea led a long life, was called Porivo (Chief Woman) by the Commanches among whom she li ved for over twent y years , and in her old age engaged all her
co nsidera ble sk ill a t speak ing a nd maniplatin g whit e bureaucracy to help in assuring her
Shoshoni people decent reserva tion holdings.
10 A full discussio n is imposs ible here, but an examina tion of American child rearing
practices, soc ietal attitudes towa rd women and exhibited by women (when compared tothe same in old world cu ltures) as well as the foodstuffs, medicinal materials, counterc ultural a nd alternative cultural sys tems a nd the deepl y Indian values these renect
should demonstrate the truth about inform a l acculturation a nd cross cultural connections in the Americas.

\I

Brandon, 6.

11 Lewis Henry Morgan, A ncient Society or Researches in the Lines of HUlllan Progress
frolll Savagery Through Barbarislll to Civilization (N ew York, 1877) .

" In Clark, 96 .

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Juana Maria Paz
From Battered Wife to Community Volunteer:
Testimony of a Welfare MotherIn 1976 my husband began beating me with a frequency and intensity that caused me to fear for my life and that of my nine monthold baby, Mary Ann . We lived in a small cottage on the Florida coastand I supported all three of us with my veteran's benefits that enabled
me to go to college for the first time.
In June of that year Brion admitted some startling things - that
he'd made sure he slept with me every day until I got pregnant andthat he'd manipulated me during the entire relationship through anelaborate system of lies and deceptions. He laughed and said it waseasy, that I had a moral code that I lived by and he could always anticipate how I'd react to any situation. He also said he wasn't letting
me go alive. I threatened to leave and he threatened to kill all of us, including the baby and the dog.
The night he dragged me around the house closing windows with
one hand, to muffle the noise, and covered my mouth with the other, I
knew he was serious. I held the baby with one arm and with the other I
tried to loosen his grip on my mouth so I could breathe. I broke freelong enough to scream bloody murder and the police arrived withinminutes, checked me for external injuries and tried to get me to makea statement but the inside of my mouth was cut and I couldn't talk.
They assured me that my neighbors were looking out for me and urged
me to yell if I needed help. They said someone in the neighborhood
would hear me and call them.
They left and Brion apologized . Actually, he wanted to have sex.
I refused and he waited until the next day to rape me. Things wentfrom bad to worse and I made plans to leave town. I was all packed
and waiting for a ride to the bus station when he came home drunkand carrying a loaded gun. He held me hostage for four hours andslapped me and knocked me down so many times that I can't
remember them all. He wanted to kill me but I think he was afraid tolive without me. He raped me until he couldn't get an erection
anymore. Mary Ann cried at first but I closed the door so she couldn't
watch and she sat down in her crib to play her red piano.
Brion decided I should cook one more dinner before he killed me
and I ran away from him on the way to the grocery store, despite his
promise to shoot me in the back if I made any false moves. He disap47

peared when I started screaming and I got to a phone and called thepolice. Since I looked like a victim from a horror movie by then andI'd called many times before, they had no trouble believing my story
but they did think I might change my mind later and refuse to press
charges . I explained that the only way for me to get out of town alive
was for them to keep him in jail overnight. The bus to Los Angeles left
once a day and I had already missed it.
I dropped out of school when Brion sabatoged the car. The campus was several miles away and public transportation inadequate sothat was the end of my steady income . (I'm a Vietnam-era Navyveteran and I was going to school under my GI Bill.) Brion had quit
his job so he could watch me every minute and I didn't trust him tostay home with the baby while I went out to work. I tried to getwelfare but I wasn't eligible while Brion lived with me and he refused
to leave. I had to get out of town to save my life and I had to get to amajor city with emergency social services. I chose Los Angeles because
it was far away and on the west coast. I knew how to survive on myown in a big city but I didn't want to go back to New York.
I arrived in L.A. after three days on the bus and I didn't know asoul there. I got on welfare quickly and again, no one had trouble
believing my story. My bruises were starting to get large and purple
and yellow and my face was sore and swollen, too . There I was, ayoung woman walking around a strange city with a baby, a suitcase,and signs of a recent beating . I guess it was pretty obvious.
"I know, I've been there," women on buses and streetcorners
seemed to say to me with their eyes . Wherever I went people seemed toknow I was on the run .
I spent nine months staying home, taking care of the baby, healing, forgetting, remembering and letting go. Some days I was too
upset to leave the house. When I did, I often returned to my roachinfested apartment near MacArthur Park to face a dreaded image of
my husband standing in the shadows, red-faced with beer andviolence, holding a gun and sneering, "Hello, honey . . . get
undressed . ""That it could come to this," I thought as I calmed down andassured myself that it was just myoid fear welling up inside me andmaking it seem so real. Surely he could never find us. After all, thepolice had arrested him. After the better part of a year I was ready toface the world again. I went to a welfare conference and plunged
headlong into welfare rights work . I gave and gave and gave, trying tochange a system that basically never budged, though minor concessions were made, and I, personally, could have become a token
minority at a low-paying social service agency job.

48

I stayed on welfare and learned how to cope with people's
assumptions about me, mostly that I'm not working and that I am
more dependent on "the system" than they are. People seemed to expect me to feel ashamed of being on welfare and they thought I would
want to keep it as secret as possible. Like when I was a battered wife, I
wanted everybody to know and I wanted them to know how I got
there. I made a conscious choice to stay on welfare, especially as I
became more employable. Aside from people's attitudes about mysupposed inferiority, shame and dependence, the life is not that bad. I
had my time to myself, and I had already learned the "ins and outs"of the welfare department.so I knew I was eligible and how to stay thatway. The money wasn't much but I'd been buying all our clothes andhousehold supplies at Thrift Shops for years anyway, so it didn't
really involve a major change in shopping or lifestyle. Also, I was
already pretty much a vegetarian and by eliminating expensive meatand dairy products from our diet and cooking from scratch a lot, I
could feed both of us on my food stamp allotment.
I basically like living alone and don't miss having a mate. I neverwanted to marry again, although I did despair at the beginning of everresuming "normal relations" with men. Then I decided I didn't knowwhat that was and didn't care. I was not afraid to face the world alone
and never thought I needed another person to co-parent my child,although a lot of my plans were postponed for years while she waslittle.
When welfare rights became a never-ending cycle of infighting
and meetings that went nowhere, I went on to other things - women'sland, school again, feminism, writing, lesbianism , and to tie it all
together, I began writing regularly for lesbian/ feminist publications. I
still have to contend with people's judgement and hostility, theirresentment that I'm getting "easy money" or that I'm getting paid to"sit home and be creative" because I had a baby, while they have togo out and work for a living. I make a clear choice to forego the social
status and higher income of regular employment in favor of the income maintenance and freedom of movement that I now enjoy.
Most people who hate me for being on welfare would not want tolive the way I do. Until recently, at my daughter's insistence, I had
never bought furniture, appliances, or any kind of entertainment
equipment such as TV, radio, tape recorders, etc. It was fine with me
to live without these things but at 7 years old and in public school mydaughter feels a tremendous pressure to be "normal". In fact, I've
done such a good job of living within my income that she doesn ' t seemto know that we're poor people and she regularly tells people that we49

"have a lot of money."
I have to watch that because most of the people who get prosecuted for welfare fraud get turned in by a friend or neighbor. People
continually ask me how I manage to stay on welfare and if I really lie
about my income. They always seem disappointed when I assure themthat I am completely legal and I report everything. My book businessis well-documented in my AFDC case and it doesn't generate enoughincome to affect the amount of my monthly check . I am careful about
not telling people in the community "my business" because eventhough my continued eligibility remains unchanged, any investigation
into my case could keep me busy for a long time and basically makemy life miserable while I clear myself of all accusations.
The hostility and put-downs are constant and subtle and all of asudden I'm not so sure of what I want anymore. I think all my earlyvolunteerism was a way of proving myself to be a capable andworthwhile person and to give something back to the taxpayers who
support me .
In addition to the women's movement, where I write for free, I
have also been a volunteer at a mental health association, community
radio and TV stations, a food co-operative, and I put in hours at a
Feminist Women's Health Center until they decided volunteerism was
oppressive to women and sent me a check for my work . I'm not sure
how much appeasing my own sense of guilt and inadequacy for not
being a wage-earner has actually helped, either myself or the world
around me, since pandering to people's hostility about welfare neverchanges their minds . If anything, the resentment increases, both insideand outside the feminist movement, as I become more successful andhappy and learn to use my welfare income to promote my career as awriter and media personality.
I have accomplished enough now that I do not have to keep proving myself again and again and I want to be more clear and focused in
my goals and activities instead of just keeping busy for the sake of being active. I still want to work to make the world a better place but
now I want my own goals to be a priority and I think it's okay ifthere's something in it for me, too, when I give my time and energy.
One of the biggest obstacles to achieving my full potential ispeople's continued presumption that I am not working and my time isavailable, or that I should work for them for free or just generally letthem waste my time. I should make it clear that these responses andpresumptions are just as strong and hateful within the New Age"counter culture" and the women's movement as in what can becalled mainstream America .
50

I have enough plans and ambitions to last a lifetime if I don't letother people's attitudes undermine my enthusiasm and my will toachieve, but it 's a constant struggle . Usually, it's easier not to discuss
welfare with anyone, especially white people who hate me for so manythings anyway. It's alarming sometimes to think about how many
minority groups I belong to and what that means, that it takes enormous energy and inner strength to overcome both the external
obstacles and my own fears. I spend a lot of time just working on
myself, coming down from the last episode and preparing for the next
idea or goal, and I think I have come farther in order to be where I am
than people who don't carry the following labels: I'm a woman, I'm
single, Puerto Rican, I have no college degrees, I'm a veteran, a single
parent, a· lesbian, on welfare, a vegetarian and kind of a counterculture progressive type. I've eaten organic food for years and I makeand wear my own flowing matriarchal costumes. Also, I'm more
downwardly mobile in terms of lifestyle and upwardly mobile in termsof accomplishments and work.
Some days it's just too much and I don't want to face the outside
world. That's why it's important for me to li ve alone, with just Mary
Ann, so I don't have to. When I can't take it anymore I just go homeand lock the door. With no phone I'm pretty inaccessible and I
discourage visits from all but the best of friends, those people who
don't put undue pressure on me .
As far as the broad assumption that I am more dependent on thesystem than someone with a job I can only contend that I feel freer
now than I did when I was being controlled by a boss, a husband, auniversity and even the feminist movement. Keeping the welfare trip
together gives me a lot of leverage in dealing with the rest of the world.
I f my books don't sell I don't have to worry about how to pay the rent
and if the people I work with on a volunteer basis don't like my performance they can't with-hold a paycheck. I would never want to befinancially dependent on a husband or lover again.
In a way, being on welfare has given me the freedom to be a
totally independent artist and also to stay celibate as long as I want. I
acknowledge the fact that white lovers, male or female, usually represent an opportunity to increase my access to money or \privilege andin that way I always depend on the relationship to make my life easier,whether that capability is realized or not. I've opted out of the wholelover game by concentrating on myself and my own process andprogress.
I no longer ask for those things that are mine by right - respect,
freedom of choice, privacy , tolerance, and understanding. I'm not51

sure I believe in mass re-education anymore . I think misjudgement
and ignorance are deliberate excuses that people use to get what theywant at other people 's expense. The people who value my work andmyself seem capable of doing that without long involved explanations,so I have stopped qualifying my life as well as my statements and I am
less likely to let myself get put on the defensive by someone else's accusations or desire to monopolize my time.
Although more opportunities exist for me in the feminist movement than anywhere else, I'm not sure it has all the answers either,since mistrust and malevolence continue to divide women and keep us
from realizing the full extent of our power together. As people taketheir freedom, in all walks of Ii fe, I believe the answer for all of us liesin the ability to increase our own and each other's choices. I don't
think the energy expended hating people like me with my $116 . permonth welfare check is helping an ybody and that kind of
jealous/anger/ resentment is something that women continue toundermine each other with. It is time we started applauding eachother's freedom, choices and movement in many - different directions . 1
I . Thi s en lire subjec l arose in correspo ndence wil h lesbia n/ fe mini SI aUl hor and hea ler
Billie POllS, who respo nd ed 10 a Slalemenl of mine in rel alion 10 PAZ PRESS lhal " I
JUSI wanl 10 break even, gelling lh e word oul is lhe mosl imporla nl lhing". I respo nd ed
so defensively 10 her urgings 10 examine lh e premise behind my Slalemenl s lhal an en lire
article emerged.

conditions
a feminist magazine
BOXS6A VAN BRUNT STATION BRooKLYN,NY !IllS
W. OR conc..ned WI .omen'./lnbiMl public.llom ..... ohcn foiled
to ref\ocl the .'pcriencn ond vicwpoin .. tJA Third World, .orkin.cw., MId oI.....omen. W..... 1 CONDITIONS 10 include .ork In •..ricty of "yl.. by both publiohed ond unpubliohcd .rilen of m... ydifferenl bocklfou ...... W• •cIc:_ wbmlssi_ from oil .omen .ho
feel • cOIIImitmcnllo .omen b Mllntqrol ..... of their IlvH.

,.... _,

Now Ed/ltd By:

DOR017/Y ALLISONELLY BULKIN
CHER YL CLARKECARROLL OLIVERMIRTHA N. QUINTANALESAIDA SANTIAGOSUBSCRIPTIONSlIS . ...,Iftdua/: IV. MttMdoIt: 19. .,.n.I oo"-hltJpoo NIl: 110. or ____ _,."".,............. s..,..1_: 16. _ _: 19. iIuIInuioIa. o..r..
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BACK ISSUES (/iwMtd subuqutnl iuutJ lfill.ttGiS.blrl: S4.jO Nt'h.

52

Gretchen Pullen

Like Old Rags

Quotes are from a n a rti cle, " Hai ti a n Women: From Rep ress io'110 Jail" published in
the Guardian in April 1982. The Guardian included wit hin the article part of a statement wrill en by H aitian women imprisoned in Puerto Rico. I have combined descriptions of Puerto Rican and U.S. jai l experiences since the article detailed conditions
which were si mil ar in both countr ies.

There is less and lessmail only relatives
listed with the Immigration and Naturalization Service
are permitted to write
allowed outside oncea week for chapel
Si xty-two refugee
womenlike old rags forgotten in someoutside the brick building a fifteen
cornerfood and drink likefoot chain
link fence
one woman mixed
broken glass
they saywith her food
how they dared to cross having
no drinking supply only urine

and yet you treat us like animals
by day the interpreter stresses
repression is not a good enoughreason for leaving
Haiti

you know this as well as we dothe I.N.S .
these womenforms are pages of English
speak only
Creolenot allowed calls to the Haitian Legal
Hotline any longer
we did not flee our
flashlights shockcountry in search ofroll call fivefrom bed to bed at nighttimes a day inside
Cottage 26
Alderson Federal Prison
pipes flooded again roused after midnight guiding
mop handles
Haitian women pushwater acrossfloorsafter 65
days on the ocean
a fter 65 dayson the ocean~

53

Phoenix
Marie's Poemher arms are scarred with years of lying in the hard water
below the highway
she smells of greaseeyes like old mussels
she slams the plate down
bites down on doublemint"yah order"
years of standing on this goddamn linoleum
no goddamn windows
hard water
sweeping dust out the side door .
she swallows hairremembering jacey saying:"yre gonna shake this town off y heels dessa .
mama's gonna be so proud ."in '59 when she just started those men would call her over"ohdezah sheeyit thats a fancy name .
howd y like to take a trip to tulsa honey.
y & thosefine breasts."'detonate'
she thought
wasnt that when a thing said what it truly was.
& wept like a fucking river
she looks like dog shit in that dress
looks like some kind of power rocks beneath the skinpushes at the skin
as she turns around spilling coffee
her broken nails
more trucks coming in54

monday morning 7 am
hands full of hot egg & sausage
she thinks about dolphins drowning
tethered up in fishernets
bodies burned with the many lines& she twists & throws the dishes
all over the clean forks
through the orange juice
her arms red with liquid
it must have hurt like hell

Violations
this is 'dedicated' to my brother-daniel jay vie.

y find y own way out.
give my hand backit belongs to me;
yre a magic man"give my hand back."y follow me around the house:i know magic
the acid i drink is the sweat off y skiny follow me around the housetrailing y long thin laughthe acid i drink is the sweat off y skiny hands are the last to burntrailing y long thin laugh ...
the wounds are subterranean.
y hands are the last to burnshadows across my throat and mouth55

the wounds are subterranean
i am not here in my body. theshadows across my throat and mouth
are highways and i am runningi am not here in my body. thedoors are locked against me. there
are no highways and i am runningbarefoot in my flowered dress
doors are locked against me there
grief is a live thing walking
barefoot in my flowered dress.
i get the knife
grief is a live thing walking.
i drag it behind me.
i get the knife
put y in a forest of a terror
i drag it behind meit belongs to me.
put y in a forest of terror;
find y own way out

56

Beth Brant

Her Name Is Helen
Her name is Helen .
She came from Washington State twenty years ago through twistedroutesof Hollywood, California,
Gallup, New Mexico,
Las Vegas, Nevada,
ended up in Detroit, Michigan where she lives in apartment #413 in thegut of the city.
She worked in a factory for ten years , six months, making carburetors
for Cadillacs.
She loved factory work. She made good money, took vacations to
New Orleans,"A real party town."
Went home to see her mom .
Went to Chicago once, but didn't like it there.
Couldn't find any Indians .
She wears a cowboy hat with pretty feathers . Can't wear cowboy
boots,
because her feet are crippled with arthritis.
She wears beige vinyl wedgies and in the winter pulls on heavy socks
to protect her bent over toes from the slush and rain .
Helen takes pictures of herself.
Everytime she passes those Polaroid booths, one picture for a dollar ,she closes the curtain, and the camera flashes.
When she was laid off from the factory, she got a job in a bar ,serving up shots and beers.
Instead of tips, she gets presents from her customers.
Little wooden statues of Indians in headdress.
Naked pictures of squaws with braided hair.
Feather roach clips in fuschia and chartreuse.
Everybody loves Helen.
She's such a good guy. A real jokester.
Helen doesn't kiss.
57

She allows her body to be held when she's had enough vodkas andLite beer .
She's had lots of girlfriends .
White women who wanted to take care of her.
Who liked Indians.
Who think she's a tragedy.
Helen takes pictures of herself.
She has a picture on a keychain, along with a baby's shoe and afeathered roach clip.
She wears her keys on a beaded belt.
Helen sounds like a chime, moving behind the bar.
Her girlfriends took care of her.
Told her what to wear, what to say, how to act more like an Indian.
"You should be proud of your Indian heritage. Wear more jewelry.
Go to the Indian Center."Helen doesn't talk much.
Except when she's had enough vodkas and Lite beer.
Then she talks about home. About her mom. About wanting to go
back before she dies.
Helen says she's going to die when she's fifty .
She's forty-two now.
Eight years to go.
Helen doesn't kiss.
Doesn't talk much.
Takes pictures of herself.
She touches women who are white, and her body is touched by theirhands.
Helen can't imagine that she is beautiful.
That her skin is warm.
That her cunt smells like fire and redwood.
That her short black hair is thick and moves like a current
when she bends her head to pick up a beer.
That her large body speaks in languages she never learned.
That her mouth is wide and full and when she smiles,
people catch their breath.

58She's a gay Indian girl.
A dumb Indian.
An ugly, fat squaw.
This is what Helen says.
She wears a t-shirt with the legend "Detroit" splashed in glitter
across her large breasts .
Her breasts that white women have sucked and molded to fit theirmouths.
Her incredible breasts that she has harnessed in a brassierethat strains and pulls with her movement.
Helen can't imagine that there are women who see her .
That there are women who want her mouth to open underneath theirown.
To taste her breath and salt.
Who want a speech to be created on their tongues.
Who want her strong flesh to dance in tremors from theirfingers and lips .
Who want to go deep inside her and touch places that are dark,wet, held together with muscle and spirit.
Who want to swell and expand two bodies into a word of our own
making .
Helen can't imagine that she is beauti ful.
She doesn't kiss .
Doesn't talk much .
Takes pictures of herself to look at so she will know she is there .
Takes pictures of herself to prove she is alive.
She takes pictures of herself.
She takes pictures of herself.

59

Ruchele ZeOeh

I've Paid My Heavy Dues

Whatcha mean I ain ' t never had no dues? Listen to me.
Don't everybody know dreary dues? In my teens,
I was a chorus high-stepper , full of ginger andall kinds of groovy moves. I was paid in fast shuffles .
Later on, I was short-changed good by my chasin' man
while my rebel-kids traded in scams and scattered.
I was thirty-five then, a tall leggy , buxsy babe.
I splashed big riffin ' with a scat quartet.
What a blast of jazzy one-night grand /stands!
I pizzazzed on and I was pleasured off the band stand.
One night I botched my stack, boom from a powerhouse joint.
I was hooked, strung-wide, inside-out; couldn't copewith the glitter. I sagged to the dregs at forty only
to be told I wasn't gonna make it. Me and the otherhoney-pots dotted all over the landscaped rest home, themean asylum scene where they stashed us to coast as they
toasted our tootsies. We were the unluckies who blew it.
How was I to know my bubble would go pouff into flickers
as rainbow sprinkles twisted and aged my wide-eye looks
long before and beyond my time. Now I know it wasn't
worth the bedeviled game . There were so many days I tried
to hide from mirrors while I wore lop-sided blinkers .
I forgot high-style gussies . I couldn't remember
how to reach out and smile; not for a long while .
Five shaky years later I showed 'em I could make it,
do it. I was togethered, a restored, rehabilitated broad .
First, I applied for General Relief with G . R. work at theCounty Hospital next day. My high and mighty social worker
said, "They don't give you somethin' for nothin'."
Their somethin' is a big nothin'. Tomorrow it's four needlin'from an A-S-S-T, Assd . Superintendent of infirmary linens.

60

I gotta fold and stack you name it just so as
I can take home pea-nuts from a State without a heart.
That government with everlastin' stakes stucked into
my frail-tail that's plum full of gizzard-miseries.
Will I make it 'til I get S.S.I. ?Not $ $ like dollar signs.
What I mean is S.I.S., somethin' like State Integrity Shit.
What'll I throw on my back tomorrow? I gotta sashay to eastside
on three slow jitneys. How about my puccoon flounced blouse thatlost its flutter? I can't holler if my slax and puce jacket don't
match . Last year it was a superoozee Goodwill good buy for two
dollars; a snatch for my shivered shade of lean crumblin' green.
It's right on. I totsy around unspiffied in rag-me-downs lacedwith tears and last years tears of other bods' indigo blues.
If you dig, that ain't all I got. So what if mine ain't themost purty butt in this bigtime city of beat crazy ruts.
Once in a while, I'll wheeze a bop chorus at the piano.
Maybe strut-tut silly after I cage a short lick at next-doorbar. It'll see me through today's spoilers of wooomon-ity.
I'll make it through tomorrow if I can bend me a willin'
shoulder. But, you'll see me run for cover if a copper
crooks a finger my way for a roll of a quickie-flinger.
My mama always told me, "Child, don't covet. Sing praises
to the Lord who will someday provide and protect us.
You'll find love, peace of mind like I did in His holy blessin'with prayer." Mama has her peace; rocked under before her timefrom a stacked deck that dealt her dirty by crocked rival gangs
and police, all totin' their merciless , random cross-fire.

61

I am pained, revolted by what I see and what I hear'til I can't feel any healin' with so many heels
diggin' into me, especially from county supervisors.
They programmed their shaft to screw my CET A plans.
They ended my hope of makin' it again, on my own.
I don't understand why there's no change for the better.
I can't give up lookin' for a perfect light. There must be
a supreme light to lead me out of this mucked-up gutter.
Tell me, what've I got? All I see are pieces; a bunchof no-class crass bits and unwanted brass hand-me-frowns.
I picked 'em up takin' turns at life's learnin' game where
every tenth bod looks for to tame another higher tiger.
I thought I was tough-stuff. I tell you, it was ever rough.
What a helluva bluff to pile on, to lay on our kind!
Someday, they'll scatter my tatters; where I don't know.
It don't matter very much. When they do, there'll be time;
so much more time to enjoy all those down-home smiles
without clouts from my piled on heavy; oh yeah,
I'm talkin' about all my UN-deserved heavy dues.

Arline Zimmerman
Homewrecker
This woman is just too much! said Sally Anders Johnssen toherself. I've never. .. ! Embarrassment flooded her, bringing on herscarlet flush, spreading over the face to the bright yellow root s of her
hair .
That did It! Nina Martarano said to herself. Now she'll come inwith me . . . no one's home . . . we'll have at least an hour to be byourselves! She dropped Andy 's arm.
"I'll try to forget you did that , Nina," Andy said out loud. But
she could still feel the hard nipples on her arm, the surprise of having
her arm grabbed gently at the wrist, drawn across Nina' s lush breasts- directly across!
Nina tried to give her a look that would melt steel - the blue
metal steel that matched her Norwegian eyes and soul. Dammit , I
can't help it, I want her! But it looked like she'd have to go in alone
after all.
Shall I go in with her? thought Andy, knowing she wanted tomore than she should . My dad always said they're all whores andpimps, Italians, and here's the proof! What if Louise should get off
early? This is wrong . This isn'l what I should be doing right now, I
should be putting my hand on the ignition key instead of this door
handle-start the car and be gone, and instead I'm getting outNina tried to be serious and not exult in her heart as she turned
the key in the bungalow door and switched on the livingroom lamp .
Andy had given in! She looked about. All was untouched, Louise wasstill at work; thank God it was a ten-o-dock night. . .
Andy sat down on the edge of an armchair, beginning to sweat,
though it was November. The blush had lasted-she felt it inside, deepin the stomach and in the place she tried not to live ... Like a guy, shechided herself angrily, like any goddamned guy trying to knock off apiece ... I'm no better than they are~playing around with someone
else's woman. And especially Louise's ... I respect Louise a lot!
Nina sat down on the couch and rejoiced as Andy came over toher. This is it! I knew I could do it! her heart flip-flopped , as her eyesdrowned in the purple-blue pupils that were Andy's best feature.
Her size, her heaviness, the 'thick body, the small breasts-none of it
mattered: it was something she was. Nina tried not to think 'butch'
63but the word kept coming to her mind as they clasped hard, still staring in each others' eyes.
Christ, what was that noise! Andy jumped, startled and spo iledtheir kiss. She's brazen, she's going to kiss me, this one . . . reversethings ... Then the feelings took over and the two bodies wheeled inawkward ecstasy on the cushions ...
These damn cushions always fall down on the floor, thought
Nina inappropriately. It's actually happening! What I've wanted forso long I can't believe it! My heart'll stop! Should we? The bed in thelittle inner room beckoned. Oh my God, what if Louise came homeearly this one night! Thinking but not thinking as she felt the delicious
press of their bodies together"This isn't right, you know it, Nina," Andy finally forced out.
She carefully untangled herself from their knot, brushing her pants
and running her big hand through her short straight hair.
"You're feeling guilty ." Nina did not move away on the couch,but sat there looking at her, mystified the other could break such a
feeling, interrupt such a moment with stupid Puritanical id~as! "It'sright if we feel it's right. Be honest, what do you feel when I do
this . . . " Nina embraced her, hard, both arms around her shoulders.
The blush came back to the wonderful face.
"I-you know what I feel," stammered Andy helplessly, "but I
also know that Louise loves you, and-and-I shouldn't be here. I'mgoing to go now." Andy rose and looked for her keys. Then over at
Nina who was staring down at the carpet.
Nina felt heaven and hell blend together in one single:. half-hour,
watching Andy put on her jacket and go to the door. "Wait! I'm coming with you .. just to your car," she finished quickly, as Andy protested something. So close ... she was so close! Wait till I tell Carol
tomorrow at work! I love her! I don't care what anyone else says or
does! I'm going out there with her to say goodnight!
I couldn't help but let her get into the car again-it was just too
strong, right now, but I know I'll have to forget it. I won't listen towhat she's saying, Andy thought, and abruptly they kissed, in theyellow headlights of an oncoming car, which caused such a storm inAndy's head she practically threw Nina off her and leaned over,thrusting open the passenger door: "Out! Now! Or I'll never leave,
don't you understand? I'm not a very strong person!" The browneyes pleaded at Andy but she set her face hard and barely responded to
Nina's wave as she drove off, not looking in the rear view at the figure
standing at the curb, across the street from the little green bungalowthat was theirs: Nina and Louise's-theirs together. Homewrecker,
64that's what I am-one of those to stay away from! I've never been any
different. .. just no good! Got to take myself in hand .. stay away fromher. ..
Nina saw the profile of Andy against the streetlight across thestreet. She didn't look over at me, but she wanted to! Again came thehidden exultation, the fear and forbidden pride, and the assurance of
having Andy for her lover eventually-it covered her whole body withcold needles. Regretfully, she went back into the house, glowing when
she glanced over at the couch, not even bothering to straighten
anything, living again in the moments of their hard grasping clutch ofeach other, that impossible kiss from another world-the hair of gold,eyes of-God! it's almost ten, Louise would be home soon! I have torearrange myself a little or she'll guess, Nina thought, wondering how
Louise could possibly not know! I can't keep anything off my guilty
face, just like my family, Louise always says .. Nina and her organgrinder emotions . .. a bunch of Italian organ-grinders! Everything isalways an opera!

***
What are they talking about! agonized Nina, peering out thefront window discreetly at them. But the bushes around the bungalow
kept her from really seeing. They'd been sitting out there for a halfhour now-and nothing, she still didn't know anything-She stalked
over to the kitchen, then back to the livingroom window to look out
again . What's going on? Why on earth did she come?
"You oughta keep her more in line," Andy said stiffly, not looking over at Louise's slim length on the chaise lounge, feeling the slow
painful red coming and going on her face. "She's just got too much
freedom. Not that I'm trying to excuse myself. I-I sort of got sucked
in, and couldn't get away, I guess-no, that's not really fair, Louise.
A admit I really wanted to-I know she's not mine, and I'll-we'll-it
won't be repeated, I can promise you that, if it means anything toyou." Andy was feeling foolish, like she wasn't making it-wasn't
coming across the way she wanted to when she planned this : to tellLouise that they'd gotten involved ... Louise's face looked lofty andcalm and almost unconcerned. She didn't even look mad! But Andycringed in spite of herself when Louise spoke, at her demeaningwords, so softly delivered and not even icy-well, maybe just a little
bit icy, but I deserve it! It was a relief at last to be able to get up andleave-not even wanting to look to see if Nina was observable-to see
if she was around . I know she must be, Louise had said she was65home ... but this is the best way ...
"And then she said I should keep a closer watch on you : makesure you don't play around again-that's what she told me, man-toman." Louise was smiling at Nina's twisted expression as she repeated
Andy's words to her. Nina wanted to cry, scream, be beside herself,
but she kept thinking: no, don't do it! don't make another opera!
that's what she expects-control your feelings! I can't hurt, openly, iI)
front of her-but tomorrow, when she's gone to visit her folks I'll Ie!
myself cry-tomorrow-right now I just have to not think of any of
this-Andy, why did you do it?! How could you say it! That it was all
my fault, in front of Big Daddy Louise, with her rigid punishingmouth! Andy, how could you, after the miracle-feeling when we
finally touched!

To the Editors, regarding the short story's use of negative concepts of women's
behavior:
I want to say that the parts of this story reflecting looksism or sizism, culturalchauvinism, role-playing, or other negatives are intended to be merely descriptive of themanner in which women often related to each other in the past I experienced as an
Italian-American woman growing up in racist southern-California in the 50's, and do
not in any way represent an attempt to condone, apologize for, excuse or otherwise promote and foster these attitudes. I believe we can gain from looking frankly at thesebehaviors, with their horrific effects on our relationships, both then and now. I feel I
have both the obligation and the right to portray people as they are in their struggles
with self-hatred and WASP attitudes we have all absorbed. Many times 'Anglos' evennow don ' t realize how they limit the range of non-WASPs to express themselves in ways
not considered (by them) acceptably 'nice .' We are shut up if we are too intense, angry,'over-emotional,' loud, hysterical, etc., especially if we have a dark face . If you find
you can use this piece but want to edit out any language in it (as opposed to organizational and / or punctuation changes) please send it back . I'd prefer to see it uncut in waysthat would delete my experience. I hope you understand. (I have recently been told byan editor about another story that the two lovers related to each other in ways 'too
heterosexual'-yet this is how reality is and has been. To censor this and present
something unreal as our experience is not going to aid anyone to confront her heterosexism. I write this hoping you agree - if not , kindly send back ms. Thanks.)
Arline Pozzi Zimmerman

66Katharyn Machan Aal interviews Judy Grahn

on
Women's Poetry Readings: History and Performance (Part /)August 6, 1982, at The Women's Writing Workshops, Ithaca College(transcribed by K.M.A., edited by 1.G . and Sinister Wisdom)*

K.M .A.: What I would like to know from you are two things in particular. One is your role as historian, telling me about theevolution of poetry readings on the West Coast. And also
what I want to get at is what it's like to give a poetry reading.
If you can describe for me what if feels like and why you do
it. What is a poetry reading, for you?
1.G.:
As I remember, the first adult reading that I did wasprobably in '66. And it was in Albuquerque, and about
eighty people came, and I did a reading. I was-I felt very
shy at that time . I was twenty-six and just getting started,
feeling as though as an adult I could be a poet. I had gone
through a child-type career with my school and schoolmatesand so on, and then there was a time when I was just getting
into the work force and learning how to be a grown-up that I
didn't write poetry for years. And then I went back to it. So
that was the first reading that I did , and then when I moved
out about eight months later I moved to the West Coast.
And one of the first things I did was to go to an open reading
and wait until the very end and then get up and,.J~ead a longpoem called "Why Do Americans," which is in Edward the
Dyke. It's a long, philosophical poem that I had written
after listening to a tape of Ezra Pound, and I thought if hecould use really slow, measured rhythms like that and takehis own time in saying the words, well, so could l. So I tried
doing something that was very measured and deliberate andfull of control of my own space as the poet and as the reader.
So I went to a reading that was an open reading and-it was ina dark environment, in a church, and wine wa~.,served, as is
the custom of poetry readings. But this was in the middle ofthe flower children renaissance of San Francisco and it seemed to me that everyone was drunk to begin with and by theend of the evening the man who preceded me was almost

67

unable to stand up. [laughter] He went on and on and on
and on, and finally I got up with what was left of theaudience and by that time I was almost too drunk to standup, too, because there was nothing to do but drink gallons ofwine while you waited. And I didn't find that satisfactory atall. My initial entry into the world of reading poetry inpublic was one of being an outsider who was dissatisfied
with what was already happening . It made me angry that
established poets' work was being sold for highprices-because I was resentful that I couldn't even get
published and yet I knew that I was good. Their autographs
would be sold, for instance, for $25 or something, just for aname on a piece of paper. This made no sense to me as a
resentful twenty-six year-old.
K.M .A.: Who were some of these poets?
Lawrence Ferlinghetti, for instance . At that time there were
J .G .:
very few women, but they were extremely important, whowere writing. Diane di Prima was one model. Diane
Wakoski was another. Denise Levertov. The fact that they
existed at all was of tremendous importance. But they werevery separated from each other. And most of the womenpoets that I saw were, first off, outnumbered by twenty to
one at a reading, and they were so reticent, they were so shy,they were so hidden behind the barricade of the podium andthey said in such small voices such insignificant things, that I
was really disgusted with them.
K.M.A.: Did Levertov and di Prima and Wakoski read like that?
J.G.:
No . No, they didn't, but I didn't see them read that often to
know what was different about how they read, and it wasn't
as different from that as I would have liked in that day. So I
didn't use their reading methods as a model. I never have. I
decided as I began dropping away from that world-I dropped away from any kind of male-dominated world-and I
began forming, along with some other people, a world of
women and women's audiences that were separated from themainstream, separated from the usual poetry audience also.
And we used poetry -for different purposes . We used poetry
to help energize women and speak to women's needs andwomen's energy. We derived our sources from that and weput it back to that same audience, and we literally built up
not only a women's poetic literature but also a women'saudience who understood it and wanted it. And we did it by68

organIzmg at the ground level and holding readings thatwere very broad-ranging in the kinds of women who would
come and read. They were from all different places and alldifferent stages of writing. But they were welcome to comeand read . And we would hold them in places where women
were. That sometimes meant lesbian bars, that s'ometimes
meant churches where there would be child care, or women's
country groups out in the country where we would be sowelcome. I remember reading till two in the morning to agroup of farm women up in the country . All the babies hadgone to sleep by that time and the women wanted me to go
on and on because they really wanted to hear what I had tosay.
K.M.A.: And this was in California?
J .G.:
Um-hmm . Yeah .
K.M .A.: Can you describe for me what one of those readings was
like? A typical reading.
.
J .G.:The early readings that were all-women's readings-I
remember one in particular that I helped organize, and it
was probably ten or twelve poets, probably three hundred orfour hundred people in the audience . There was still too
much alcohol, because we did not know not to- I didn't
know that you could even do a reading without alcohol. I
had known many real outright drunks who were poets who
wouldn't read without just being completely tanked.
K.M.A .: The Dylan Thomas influence.
J.G .:
Yeah, and the beatniks. I think they followed that line, too.
So it wasn't until later that I got control of that aspect and so
did other women and there's-alcohol is no longer a part ofwomen's readings . But at that time it was, and a sort ofparty atmosphere . A very political atmosphere was part ofit. And at that reading there were just about ten or twelve
poets. I was very militant at the time on a number of issues .
Another poet was Pat Parker, and she's a Black lesbian poetwith Movement experience and sensibility. She had comethrough already two or three Movements by the timelesbian-feminism was beginning to develop, and she helped
develop it, as I did, as a philosophy and as a way of getting
groups of people together who would form an audience. So
one of the major audiences for us has been lesbian-feminists .
That's only been one of them, but it was very formative . She
and I would team up and we often read toge:ther as a pair .

69

K.M.A.: Was this still the late sixties?
J .G.:
Yeah. '69, '70, '71, '72, '73 . This is the time period. Anotherperson was Willyce Kim, who was the first Asian lesbian toreally speak up. In her poetry she had a very aggressive
stance, with provocative and funny poems. We would
operate as teams very often, reading together, being asked toread together, going to colleges and schools and high schools
and churches and benefits and rallies and that sort of thing.
K.M .A.: Did you get paid?
J.G.:
Gradually. In the beginning the pay was sometimes just gas,
and then gradually it began to be honorariums, and finally it
became a fixed fee that built up over a period of time.
Primarily what the readings did besides pull people together
for a social evening that was also highly energizing and thatthey loved, was promoting the books that we were puttingout, so people knew about them . Because there was no
distribution network for our books at that time and they
were passed by word of mouth. It was a tremendously exciting time. No one stopped to analyze what was happening.
Everything was happening and going on. So it was very exciting. From reading The Common Woman poems I became
involved then with a group of musicians who were performing. We performed at the Ash Grove, in fact, in Los
Angeles, and I alternately sang and played with them or was
an individual poet on the stage. That was quite a raucous
weekend also, organized by one of the waitresses, who waspromoting women's material. I~ was a whole women's
festival. So The Common Woman poems were read onstages in nightclubs as well as in bars as well as in churches
and libraries as well as on the radio.
K.M.A. : And this was when again?
J.G.:
Around '72, '73. The most interesting thing I did with it-I
developed a technique for the purpose of strengthening myvoice as a woman's voice. It was very, very clear that the
women poets, with a few very important but token exceptions, who I've named, but for the rest, their message was
weak and they were inconsequential. So I deliberately
developed along with Gontent of the poems that would turn acorner, take women through being oppressed or victimizedt or pressured or underpaid-all those "isms"-all the way
through to the other side of what was strong about being a
70

woman, what was energizing and joyful and the source ofideas and historically exciting, brilliant, had something to dowith science or spirituality or any of those elements. In addition to the content saying that and the form of my words,
the form of my delivery had to say that, too . So I
developed-I sat and thought it through, thought about
what was needed, and I did away with the podium as often
as I could. In my first performances I would not use a
podium at all. I would not stand behind a large wooden slabthat was going to block me off from my audience and makeme feel small, 'cause most of them are designed for very tall
people to start with. And secondly I-for a number of years
I would not stay confined to the mike. I wanted a moving
mike or to do away with the mike altogether, just so that I
could move around the stage the way the rock singers did.
Because I could see what their techniques were doing andhow alive their performances were. So I would perform A
Woman Is Talking to Death very often walking up and down
the stage, walking it, using it like a stage more than using it
as a podium, while at the same time not doing a dramatic
reading in the old sense of a dramatic reading, but sort of athis-is-the-way-Americans-talk poetry reading.
K.M.A.: What do you mean by "the old sense of a dramatic
reading"?
J.G.:
I did not use any dramatic gestures, and my voice didn't riseand fall in dramatic ways. I've become a little more like thatin these later times, but at that time I would read it almost
deadpan in a certain way, very directly, in other words, justvery direct: "Here it is." But at the same time I would movearound and I would not be a static figure on the stage. And
this-It seemed to me this electrified. The other thing that I
did was always make eye contact with people, wheneverpossible. If I could have memorized the poems I would havedone that, but my memory wasn't good enough. So I did thenext best thing, which was to try to meet everybody-in-theaudience's eye if possible, even if it was four hundred people
or something. Another thing that I did, really early on, to
break the spell of poetry being fragile, especially women's
poetry if it's being fragile and hearts-and-flowers, was toturn the microphones up too high, the amplifiers, and getvery close to the mike and pop and hiss right into it[laughter] so that people were forced to listen to the impact
of my voice as well as the words. That was a little piece of71

drama . It was abrasive, but it also broke through to theother side of poetry so that the poetry stopped being so contained and so controlled as it had been . And it broke free ofthe whole Creeley school that was very tightly contained
poetry. It just burst out and was something else altogether. I
did that for all of us, for the woman's voice . That was StageOne.
K.M .A .: How did people react to that?
J .G .:
They loved it. It grated on them and it electrified them and it
made them want more and it made them weep and cry.
K.M.A.: Was this primarily women's audiences?
J.G .:
Men would-If the audience was all women, men would
sometimes dress up like women and sneak in to hear .
[laughter] Isn't that funny?
K.M.A.: It's like The World According to Gorp, that movie that's
coming out.
J.G .:
I haven't seen that.
K.M.A.: He does that in order to be at his mother's funeral.
J.G.:
Yup. That would happen. So they weren't all all-women's
readings. Some of them were, oh, the regular poetry crowdof San Francisco, the young poetry crowd. Some of themwere more Leftie-type rallies that would be going on, or
issue-oriented things that would be happening, where I
would read . And then sometimes I'd read for college classes,
for college-type audiences. So there were a number ofaudiences listening, even that early.
K.M.A .: How did the college audiences react to your style? I'm justasking-I'm curious if it was any different because they'd beused to the more straitlaced academic approach .
Oh, I think they had mixed reactions. I think that it was new
J .G.:and I think probably for some of them they didn't knowwhat to make of it and it didn't have a context and so they
just sort of heard it and went on and it was a curiosity that
happened. Other people had heard Ginsberg and had heardsome of the more declarative sixties poets, and so it wasn't
all that really different. Just a different subject matter. And
what would bother them would be the content. Some people
just.picked right up on it. As always, the content of women's
lives had not been very directly spoken before, so-for instance, I think I was one of the first people, perhaps thefirst, to read anything overtly on the subject of rapeand-We had published a poem by a woman-it was called
The Rape Journal-and it just described1a rape and its after72

math and the effect it had on her, wanting to stay home all
the time . And then she noticed that her parents had locked
themselves into their house out of fear and she didn 't wantto live in jail. That her parents were afraid of being broken
into, so they never went out , for instance. She just noticed
the effects that fear has . I would read that out in classes andtwo or three women would get up and have to leave because
they were crying because something like that had happened
to them and they'd never told anybody, and the poem would
go right to the heart of it. So the readings were-they wereso much more than poetry, always, in the sense of "art for
art's sake ."There's so much about life or about what had
been unspoken or about uncovering something or aboutpulling people together toward some end or some purpose,to speak more clearly about themselves or to understand ahistory that they hadn't known before. The sheer use of it
was almost overwhelming, and the demand for it was almost
overwhelming . Lesbians had never heard the word dyke used
in a performance, in any kind of legitimate way. They ' d only
heard it used as an underground or as a cuss word used tomake them feel bad. So to hear it said out loud by someone
who was standing up in front with a microphone was justthrilling to them . They memorized my work. Women would
memorize it in those days when the distribution systems
hadn't gotten going and there were no bookstores or only
two bookstores handling our work . We were selling like hotcakes, but it was through a network that was word of
mouth. They would memorize the poems and go and recitethem to someone they knew in cities hundred s of miles away.
That 's how sometimes my work would end up on posters or
calendars or something paraphrased, because someone hadremembered it. It had gone into an oral method of communication .
K.M .A.: When you say we, do you mean Diana Press?
J.G .:
Well, the Women' s Press Collective was the first group of
women publishing in our era. That was the organization that
I founded and worked on. And then later we merged with
Diana Press. By that time there were a number of presses
that had gotten going, bringing out women's work, exclusively women's work. Alta's Shameless Hussy was thefirst to do women's political feminist poetry.
K.M.A .: You talked about "Stage One" in your presentation, yourperformance . What's after that?
73

J. G.:Of breaking through. Stage Two, after I'd listened to somebeginning women musicians, I wrote the She Who poems.
And they were very musical, very rhythmic. And I would
read them without talking about poetry at all. I would readthem as though the only thing that mattered was the performance and not the fact that it was poetry. So the selfconsciousness that is so present in many poets was gonefrom my performance. I also wouldn't talk about myself. I
wouldn't make any attempt to make a communication orcontact between myself as a performer and the audience. I
would make no warm contacts whatsoever. I would just getup and very starkly read these electrifying poems one after
another after another. So that something would build thatwas beyond the usual form of communica'tion.
Something-I was aiming for some bubble of energy tocome out ot that kind of performance that would just electrify people. And often it would. It would bring them totheir feet screaming. Or I would aim for them to all say"ooh" or "ohh" or all say "ahh" or something like that,
because something in it had really struck them, and helped
them feel closer to each other. I thought that what should
happen next was that it should move beyond my single voiceand the poems should be delivered by a group of voices, likea chorale. So I began working with a group of women who
had never done any performing and were not in any way
literary or poetic or anything, but were simply interested inwhat was happening with women's ideas, and were interested in working with the poems because they had beenaround while I was writing them, or they had taken a writingclass from me, or something. So about a dozen of themworked with those poems for probably a year. They neverreached the stage where they could take control of the stage.
They didn't knowhowto do that and they didn't wanl to dothat. And they would not use microphones, so there was noway to amplify what they were doing. So it remained an art
that was very good for an audience of about forty or fifty
people, but not more than that. And that was disappointing
to me. But what they did with the work was really wonderful. We used a tape re€Order to get feedback and that was
how we knew how we were doing. We would all listen to atape. And we would divide up the voices, high voices andlow voices, slow voices and fast voices, and do poetry inrounds or do it in cadences or do it as call and response or a74

chorale and a single voice or a duet. And some very beautiful
things came out of it that made me understand the possibility of it. But I couldn't ever either take charge of the group orfind a way to work with it collectively, so I had to leave. And
I didn't take the performance any further in that direction
because I thought that was as far as I could take it and there
was nowhere further I could go without stopping everythingelse I was doing. I was also a publisher and an editor and aprinter, an organizer as wel1 as a poet.
K.M.A.: This was what year?
J .G.:
Well, I wrote those poems in '72. We put them on at the Ash
Grove in that November, so this was in 1973. And also during 1973 I wrote A WOll1an Is Talking to Death and almost
always performed that as an individual, although often Pat
Parker or Willyce Kim would read parts of it with me in akind of duet. It was a good stage thing to do, to have two
people reading the work.
K.M.A.: Why?
J .G.:
Poetry that I saw in the sixties-The poets were competitive.
I seem to remember a reading in which there were six orseven men and Denise Levertov, and they got into a physicalbattle over the microphone. I remember her yanking on
someone to pul1 him away from the mike, and then having ascrap on the stage. [laughter] And maybe my memory iswrong and maybe it was someone else and not Denise, but I
do remember being influenced by that event as neverwanting that to happen to me. And one of the things we
women concentrated on as a group of poets was breaking
down in a number of ways the competitiveness. So I
never-in those days never gave a reading that was solely my
own work. I always read other people's work. Sometimes
almost half my reading would be other people's work . I
remember coming to do a reading in New York City, in
Manhattan, a big reading at a place cal1ed The Firehouse,
which was a lesbian community center. And there was just a
mob of people al1 sitting around on the floor because no one
could even get chairs together for these things. I read for two
and a half hours, and for about the first twenty-five minutes
I read some other California feminist poets, as I knew that
Easterners hadn't heard of them. So I read Susan Griffin, I
read Heather, and I read Alta, and Pat Parker, and I readWillyce Kim. And finally someone in the front said, "Whatsa matter? You afraid to read your own work?" [laughter]75

So I explained to them what it was that we were doing, andpeople started crying because they said they had forgotten
about that particular value. Because of course that was alsoa New York value, but it gets lost easily. Of being able tobring someone else's work along with you. Audre Lorde, I
think, read a poem of mine in Copenhagan. And I've readher work all over the West Coast, so that people would readher more. And I've read Adrienne's. When Adrienne Rich
and I did a joint reading about two years ago at the
Manhattan Theatre Club, it was a matter of course by thattime that she would read one of my poems as a part of herreading and I would read one of her poems as a part of myreading. Even though we're three thousand miles separated
and couldn't work together any more closely than that, thatwas the least we could do. And it was a given that that would
happen. And that was because of years of everybody reading
other people's work in order to acknowledge that we're notindividual and not alone in what we're doing in developing
this new voice. And it is a new voice. It's a new woman's
literature. And it's happening. It happened in poetry inthose years. But there's also going to be a new fiction and a
new nonfiction. A new way of thinking will come out of it.
It's definitely a going renaissance.
K.M.A.: Ongoing.
J .G .:
Ongoing. Yes.

(Part II will appear in S W 26)

76

Darquita and Denyeta in Park"© JEB, 1981

77

SDiane Bogus
How Does You Love Me, Sweet Baby?

For Dori(A Black woman asks)"How does you love me, Sweet Baby?"
I love you like this, HoneyMama:I love the pores in your skin,
the freckles on your face,
and the hairs in your nose.
I love you more than every toe nail you ever clipped off yo' feet,
more than every corn flake you ever poured in a bowl,
more than every seed you ever spat from a watermelon rind.
I love you more than Maybelline loves eyes,
more than Avon loves doorbells,
and more than Madame Bergamont loves grease.
That's how I love you, HoneyMama.
Then, she asks:"And how does you want me, Sweet Baby?"
I answer: I want you like I want my coffee, HoneyMama,
hot and black,
I want you like I eat my greens-with my fingers and no fork.
like children want suckers,
and like babies want tiddie.
Then she asks,"And how you gon' keep me, Sweet Baby?"
I'm going to keep you close like a secretprecious like your Mama's picture
and watered like a potted plant.
I'm going to keep you in-like heat in the wintertimeon the bed like your grandmama's quilt
and free like a naked sleeper.
"But how long will it last, SweetHoney? "It'll last as long as we call home a family
as long as music is played there
and as long as joy is in our hearts, eyes and touches .
It'll last, and this is the truth, MamaBaby,
Every moment that it does.

78

SDiane Bogus

Lady Godiva
As hope I bid you dream of her
Astride her ivory stallion
Arriving bare, with breasts for you,
Upon some wide, green galleon.
Leaning down she will offer you
Chocolate and a fantasy rideLook lusty, lustful, hot for you
Her voice a piper's, pied.
You climb behind her butt, her backA back that's brazen to behold,Touching her, your pubic hair
Sparks that that's wanton in your soul.
She laughs aloud, gives sex full reign
To her brilliant, strapping horse.
It rears, her smell wafts all about
Fragrant, moist, then off"Lady Godiva, Lady Godiva,
I fear, I want, I need!"
She laughs again, rides on as fineWith all of passion's speed .
Both new and young to bareback rides,
As new as much to Self,
You clutch at first her waist, her breasts
Then grip her thighs' deep cleft.
Seasons of smell, years of taste
Spread out beyond, headlong
She rides, you ride, she rides
You ride, you ride, she rides you on.
Lady go dive a lady go
Dive, the horse's hooves lay rhyme.
Up and down and up and down
She rides you out of your Mind.
To places untouched, reds unfelt,
To blues, the hues of come.
She knows the way to Orgasm a Hill
The knoll where she was born.

79

Lady Godiva, Lady Godiva,
Enchanted Princess Charm
Lesbian of dreams undreamed
I offer her now as one.
Should you go there, should you go
Where I spin the way for you
Go again when alone in bed;
Go, whenever you do.
Lady, go dive a lady ... Go
Dive a lady, go dive
A lady ... go dive a lady80Jacqueline Lapidus
Exmatriate
I. NIGHTMeRES

waking to drizzle and the inevitableegg dream fragments drying
on the rims of my eyes
why am I always taking trains
across the ocean rushing for planes
on a forged ticket caught
with a bomb in my bag?
in dreams I am never ready,never on time frantically I tie
a blue kimono round my nakedness
while mother unperturbed
says don 'I worry, I'll drive you
it's like that every night:
I'm back, I pack, I try
to leave the mother-country
oh mama, missed myconnection

three years on an island, lotuseater, languishing, in lovewith sunlight, writing
to mother of motherly women,mother-in-law, grandmothers
drying like raisins on their doorsills

81when she arrives
armed with guidebook and bathing suit
I am already a stranger,
speaking an ancient language with my hands
she confers grandma's diamondon my finger,
finds my house bare my womb
has just been scraped dry
sullen, we stumble through the beehive tombclutching our husbands
secrets
lies

III. NOTRE DAME DE PARIS
spider in the interstice between
two lives, I have -survived
a coup d'etat
domestic servitude
postal strikes
partouzes
I have cracked the Napoleonic CodeI emerge, blinking, from organ pipes
to find I've missed the 60s
and the war
I am spinning a web of my own
attracting visitors like flies• beehive lomb : Agamemnon's tomb a t Mykenae, in th e Peloponnesus

82some day it might be turned into a novel:

the first ten years were the hardest
now my accent is nondescript
as a passport , thi s fabled city
just another one-horse town
where I am teaching again
the alchemy of wordshome
is where my books are
I leave the hustle for cheap flights
free phones to those
who just got off the boat
my papers are in order
my number listed
my line: busy

IV. SOME PEOPLE CONSIDER THIS A SAFE POSITION
wondering how long waiting
for a sign the fifth gold inlay
the first grey haira gap in family snapshots where
the piano used to bea death83

v. MOTHER RIGHT
high above the Seine, bewilderedin this roomful of happy women
she cannot tell the mothersfrom the daughterssomething
about the way they kissupon parting, what's
going on here?
a swarm of beesa school of fisha flight of swans
a flock of ewes
a gaggle of geesea herd of cows
a pride of lionesses
explaining in letters: here
my past is past, I melt
into crowds unrecognized,
vault over barriers I do not even see
here where the rooted failto bother me, I find room
to listen to voices in my headand strength for the women in my arms
my pleasure
grows in correspondence
dear mother,
this ocean wide and salt enoughnourishes us bothand it was you who taught me
how to swim
I've gone backthe way you came,singing my mother-tongue
eating dry bread 'in steerage
for a glimpse of the new world84Linda Smukler
from Tales Of A Lost Boyhood
I. The Bicycle Parade
walking outside into the 90 degree heaton the morning of July
the 4thdressed only in shorts and sneakers taking long strides
on my summer-brown legs
I puffed out my thin and nakedchestfeeling my shoulders high in the sun
clenching my fists
and biceps
I was strong and I was proud
only my hair pulled tightly back from my forehead into along heavy braidslapped against my back and reminded me of
my sexI had just turned 7 years old andoutside every summer on July the 4th
party

the whole block gave a

I had gone out to admire the work on my bicycle decorated forthe afternoon parade with red and blue and yellow crepe paper
carefully woven through each spoke of each wheel andtwisted around every available piece of frame and handlebar
my bike gleamed as I tied my favorite mascot a longthick beaver tail dangling Davy Crockett from the back fender
I then strode down our almost treeless street
houses so close I
could see inside our neighbors' kitchens hearing the voices of
screaming children
I often wondered if they could hear the samefrom our house but today I paid little attention as I walked up aconcrete driveway all glittery in the morning light to a group ofgirls putting the final preening touches to their pink bicycles
thegirls were my sister's friends but I greeted them as if they were myown feeling separate and strong in my naked and sun-drenched
powersthrowing out my chest as I admired their handiwork
all the time thinking how much better my bike looked incomparison
I asked the girls to come with me to see the preparations for thelater eventsand they followed to where the adults purposefulin their white shorts and fat legs and brightly colored shirts andbeach hats were setting up picnic tables and grills forbarbecues
tossing burlap bags into large heaps which smelledandmore of farms and potatoes than of lawns and white houses
laying out cartons of eggs that someone said would be used for a

85

86

contest where people threw eggs at eachother and tried to catchthem
we watched for awhilethen bored and being the selfproclaimed leader of the morning
I led the girls running over the
newly mowed lawns lying carpet-like before every
housethrough sprinklers swinging back and forth throwing
great arcs of water and rainbows onto me and the girls and theparched ground as we soaked ourselves in the searing heat
the temperature was reaching 100 degrees before noon when
my sister and I rushed into the house for lunch and tried to eat
the tuna fish sandwiches my mother had made for us
Ifelt nauseous with the heat and excitement but managed to nibble tiny bites into my soggy bread
my mother then decided togive us salt tablets before letting us back out and I felt close
to vomitting as I tried to swallow the full salt and milk
but I rananyway for the outdoors when my mother caught me with a hard
voice
Linda. she said Put on your shirt.
lassoing my handon the latch of the screen door
I wondered if I should run
pretending not to have heard
Linda! she demanded again
what I replied sinking deep into the quicksand of her
voice
Put on your shirt.
I turned to her with more sickness
rising in my gut
Why I whined
It's too hot to put on ashirt.
we looked at eachotherLittle girls she firmly said
Do not go outside without
their clothes on .
What do girls have to do with it? I asked trying to stand as awave of dizziness carne over me
Go put on a SHIRT!
her blue eyes glaring at me through her
face
No. I refused sicker with the memories of our past everytime
had to put on a dress to match my sister who never seemed tohave any problems with her attire
as I tried to put on myjeans hiding the holes so my mother wouldn't throw
them outknowing it would be forever before I could convince
her to get me a new pairand then I remembered my strength my naked powers of themorning
I couldn't
I refused again shouting this time
Then you're not going out at all young ladysaying it calm andclearemphasizing her last words as if to inform me just exactly what I was87my fury rose higher and higher as I slammed my fist down on thetable at the power she thought she had over me and did
my blow knocked over a glass of milk which rolled off thetable shattering on the floor
she whirled around and came afterme chasing me through the kitchenboth of us trying to avoid
the broken glass and the pool of milk
picking up a hairbrush off the desk she managed to grab hold of
my arm backing me into a corner as I tried to pass through thesolid wall like a ghost on t. v.
her arms and the hairbrush coming
at me blinded in my cries onto my naked shoulders and backand legs over and over with a fierceness I didn't understand
until I found myself sobbing and retching on the floor hands covering my face my back up against the cool white wall
she was stooping with her back to me "cleaning up the spilt milk
and the pieces of glass
the memory of my beautiful bicycle sitting outside without me surfaced in my bleary mind
and I stopped crying longing drawing me out
I knew I had to ride in theparadeO.K . I made my voice strong I'll put on the shirt.
said as I
watched the tiny specks in the linoleum floor
hearing silence inher turned backMom! I said even louder
looking up I'll
put on my shirt!
she turned around to face me
I looked backdown feeling the shame of my acquiescence
I want an apology she demanded
I'm sorry I mumbled trying to control my voice thinking not of giving in but only of
my bicycle and the parade and getting out
What?! I can't
hear youI'm SORRY! blurting out the words which had lost
every meaning in having first said thempointing to the floor in front of her her face not responding she
said Come over here and clean up your mess
I lifted myself
off the floor with my arms feeling weak on my legs wondering
what she meant
if she was going to let me go
bending down as
she watched me swab up the remains of the milk
There's moreand I went over there keeping
over there she directed at me
down the knot of fury which threatened to explode again
can I go now? I asked weaklyo .k. she said her face unchanging
But only if this never happens again.
justI nodded vaguely and left the kitchen to find a shirt
wanting to get out of the house 'as fast as I could
I caught up with the others joining my sister and herfriends who had been my morning followers and felt their eyes88on my swollen face
I stared out at them making my face
hard and tried to sound removed and mean as I
avoiding the look of fear and concern on my sister's
said Hiface
I suddenly caught sight of my scrawny arms
as we rode on
dangling out of the sleeveless blouse that covered my chest
the girls
I wasn't any
I had become a part of them I thought
different
I heard their laughter and saw their dainty arms andtiny hands lightly holding onto their handlebars
I filled with disgust
the rage in the kitchen sweeping back overmeas I gripped my bicycle harder wanting to pedal past all ofthemto pedal past my thin arms and the laughter and thecrowds and the blouse sticking to my back in the heat
the ragegrew in my belly until I couldn't pump hard enoughhard past
bursting
I stopped
letting everyone go by
my sister looking backI glared at her
with a look' that said she better not say anything or she wouldpay
I waited until the last paraders went bythen ripped off
my shirt and threw it on the grassremounting my bike I rode on at the back of the line
I held my head
for a moment I felt free and strong again
up and felt the air cooling my chest as I rode steadily
through the course
but slowly the heat began to work on me sending its
waves around and through my body weakening every circle myfeet tried to accomplish on the pedals
I saw the parents lining the street who I had imagined in the
moment of my sudden defiance to be cheering me on as if I werea hero who had been rescued and saved only seconds before being unjustly hungI heard them now jeering and yelling at me
I closed myeyestrying to convince myself that they were not all staring at
my thin now strangely cold and clammy chest
I opened myeyesseeing faces all around changing back and forth laughing
and pointing at mewere they really laughing at me?
at the garish nightmare of mybrightly colored bicycle? why had I made it so bright?
I caught sight of a woman smiling at me through her openteeth
the cleft between her large breasts and the white edge ofher brassiere showing brightly under her low v-neck blouse
I grabbed the center of my handlebars with my fists clenching my89

arms tightly over the sides of my chest to hide my small pink nipples
horror rising to my racing heart then to my neck andcheeksmy hair rough and scratching my backthe bicycle started to shake
I tried to hold on blinded by thesweat trickling into my eyes
or fall
I had to stopand I did stopand turned my bicycle around walking it now
my ears hot but not hearing
my eyes open but not seeing
my legs walking on their own back to where I had dropped
my shirt
which I found and put on
hidden now and safe in my covering
shame
descended from my ears and travelled inward anddown to lodge somewhere between my heart and belly
it secretly and silently asked as I walked .home through the crowds
Did you see me?
and answered back for itself and all thefaces lining the street
No.
I didn't see.
No one saw.

II.
coming homein the afternoon
after a quiet and watchful day
in my first year of school
sitting still and silent over a cookie
and a glass of milk
and began to talkmy mother sat down with me
she told me that the next day we would visit a doctor who was going to test me and ask me some questions
as she watched me I could smell the milk as if it had suddenly
turned sour
I didn't ask but she went on to say that we weren't going
because I was sick that I was perfectly healthy
that his kind of
doctor was called a psy-chi-a-trist
and that we were going tofind out if he could help me learn things better in school and tohelp me make friends
I felt my lips tighten not knowing what to say
so I nodded
and looked down seeing the half-eaten cookie
my mother got up and walked to the counter
I pretended I wasinvisible
then quietly got up myself
leaving the milk and cookie on thetable
and went up to my room90

I knew why I was being taken to the doctor
it wasn't what mymother said
it was because I was a boy
believed I was a boy
wanted to bea boy more than anything else in the world
and I knew mymother knew because of the ways she always got angry at myplaying ball and wanting to wear pants and the way I fought every
I felt her always watchingtime I had to get dressed upmeand I hid from her gaze as if I were walking a razor thin highwire always about to fall and slice myself in half
the knobby bedspread was rough on my bare legs as I sat on the
bed so I got up and took off my skirt
going to the dresser for
my jeans
I felt protected as I put them on
but a knot of something
thick the taste of sour milk
remained in my belly
as I tried
to look at a bookand hoped the next day would never comewaiting with my motherin a room filled with couches and Weekly Readers
I tried to look at one and watched the only other person in theroom a woman when she wasn't watching me
who was she
waiting for?
I felt like I was going to get a shot
remembering
the last time when the doctor told me I was going to get a little
pin-prick a vac-cine he called itlaughing his little laugh likeit was nothing to be worried about
I started to cry when hepulled down my pants and told me to lie down on his lap
which I obeyed then started to struggle against his arm feelingthe needle get closer to my naked bottom
he said Relax It will
be over in one second
but I managed to break free and kickthe thing out of his hand before it got to me
my mother and thenurse having to hold me down for a second try
as he stuck theneedle in my rear
I was thinking that I would act older this time when a little
boy dressed in a white shirt and a frightened face came out of aclosed door at the other end of the room
and walked over to thewoman who I knew now must be his mother
he was followed by a nurse in a white dress
who called out mynameI went into the doctor's office alone and found a room filled withtoys
my sizeand sat myself down at thethe furniture all child-size
small table the nurse had told me to sit at
the doctor came in dressed in a white coathis hands full of91

papers
he sat across from me in another tiny chair
he was tall and had
no hair except around his ears and towered over me andeverything else in the roomhe smiled at me
and said hello
I said hello backtrying to
make my voice sound loudYour name is Linda?
I nodded knowing he knew exactly what my name was
My name isDoctor Boz
he must have seen my hunching shoulders because
he reached over and patted them and said Don't worry
Nothing is going to happen
I thought of the other doctor'slittle laughand he did ask me questions:
Did I have friends in school?
tried to think of the names of the girls in my classthere's
Laurie and Billie andSally
I saidI couldn't think of any more so I made up
loudlyWhat's your teacher's name? Mrs. Donahue . Do you like her?
didn't know but said yes in a quiet voice
I thought of the mice
she had shown us at the science fair
What games do you like toplay?
my heart tightened
I should have made up an answer
before I cameurn tag and baseball and hide andgo seek
my shoulders went up
believing I had given somethingaway
the mice were in a flat box with little walls and pathways
through it and had wire on top so you could see themWhat
do you like to watch on T. V. ?
all I could think of was Zorro
and Leave it to Beaver but suddenly I remembered Sundaynights and Walt Disney so I said Walt Disney
I've seenmovies too
I surprised myself offering the information
without being asked
then I thought it might make me seem
smart What movies? Bambi I answered andand my mind
went blankthen came backand Cinderella and Sleeping
Beautythe mice ran through the box to get their food at theother end Do you remember the story of Sleeping Beauty?
I
saw the doctor's face looking serious and calm reminding me of
my father who asked me questions like this every night at dinnerwhen he came home from work
I noddedTell me thestory he said and I felt my face itching and my throat too myheart beating fast sorry I had mentioned anything abouLmovies
in the first place
but I went on
there was a baby born anda witch put a spell on her
Do you remember the witch's
name?
Millificent
I knew I passed
Then what happened?
I couldn't remember
trying to see the picture book we92had at home which told the whole story and followed a record
but all I could see was the picture of Millificent dressed in a dark
cloak and looking very mean and angry her arms raised up likesome huge bat as she screamed at a room full of people who were
all smaller than her but fat and eating
not remembering I
skipped and blurted out
Sleeping Beauty fell into a long sleep
and a prince came riding on a horse and found her castle covered in
weeds and he kissed her and she woke up
the doctor looked at
me and nodded his head then looked down at his
paperseverytime the mice ran the wrong way they would suddenly stop and freeze crouching down
I could see their muscles
shaking
Do you know what you want to be when you growup?
someone in the class asked Mrs. Donahue why the mice
were shaking and she said they shake because they get a little
shock of electricity and that way they learn to find their food
fasteruh
I tried to look like I was thinking
in my head I
heard an explorer a sailor and saw Bambi running through thea docwoods
I I I don't know yet I said out loud maybe
tor
the doctor across from me smiled and reached over patting
That's a good thing to think about he said andmy headthen felt down below the table lifting up a trayon the trayhewas a box with holes cut in it and a pile of colored shapes
asked me to put the shapes into the holes which matched themwhich I did easily happy there were no more questions
all thetime wondering how much I had given away if the doctor knew
my secret life
and what he would do to me if he did
when I finished the puzzle the doctor looked back down at his
papers with his blank faceno smile now
and asked me tochoose a toy in the roomand go play with it
I thought it wasanother test sure he was watching every move I madegetting
up slowly from the chair I looked around the roomandsaw the teasets and the baby dolls but couldn't go to them notknowing what I would do with them once I got there
I felt thewith some power
trucks and the baseball equipment drawing meof their own
and tried not to look in their direction knowing
exactly where they were in the room using every bit of will I had
to avert my eyes
no I wouldn't reveal anything about
myself having got that far
my breath came fasternotknowing where to go
frantically searching for a safe
choicewhen my eyes finally rested on a wooden dollhouse standing on the floor neat the far wall93

I walked over to it
and looked down through the roofless ceilingand saw that it was filled with carved wooden dolls
their shapes
there was a vaguely male dolla vaguely
thick and roundand very vague children dolls
just smaller andfemale doll
perfectly non-committal
I sat down pretending to playliftingeach wooden form out and above the square wooden rooms trying to ignore my shaking arms the doctor's eyes searing my backand let the relief of another survival wash over me when he said
he was finished and I could go out of the room.

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94

Dorothy Love
Visitation Of The Icon
What writhing flowing Majesty
Oozed from the vision of Her Darkness.
She settled upon me like a mist.
A plague of sense and spirit thisEnchantress seized my brain
Bound my reason
And sweetened my captivity
With a song .
She sang my lustWith hidden dreams stolen fromValleys of my yearning
With airy lips upon my cheeks
She sang me promises no one could keep .
I waited for Her to speak
But She was silent
In a whisper almost in my mind I said
"I've seen you before
You are She
Of my primeval cravings."
Yet dialogue She would have no more
But wordlessly took me into Her rapture
Made me look into Her Brown Her Dark
Her ebony flesh to capture
The phantom of Her touch in me .
A touch mystic yet profane
Conjuring wellsprings of forgotten memories
From sunsets long ago I became
A child walking streets-turned-playgrounds
Among other bodies colored
Black red yellow brown
And saw it was She who'd watched
From a morning seat on porches
Her children safe in play
While picking beans swapping news
And keeping other rituals of the day.
95

When She came closer She smiled
And Her mouth was big wide roundness
Like the hips of my brother's wife
Holding me rapt and soundlessOn Her slopes and curves .
I looked into the black of Her eyes
And traveled the lands of my youth
Where She brought me to
A reckless drumming
Drumming and drumming for truth.
A moving refrain played to and sang
In rhythms swift and tamelessShe taught me to harness
Her mystery in earnest
By giving name to the nameless.
Fondly she stroked my face
With creamy chocolate fingers
That had the touch of fantasiesPrivate inviolate
Ones that lingered
And guided my pubescent hands
In dreamy baths
On afternoons past.
I laughed a little.
She laughed a lot.
Then somewhere inside the steamy hot
Of my soundless self
Her smell rattled my nostrils.
I took Her breast in a kissEntering a sapphic eucharist
That anointed andExpunged from me the' blight
Of a mistold tale of wrong and right.

96

Her voice was
A pool hall
Jukebox's colored liturgyA guts and soul epiphany
Of things found out lost or won
By an Etta James or Dinah Washington
She wore pedal-pushers and ballerina slippers
Or was it tight skirts with left-side zippers?
Hugging the better part of an easy stroll
Down some city's street
As She feasted my soul.
A womonchild I was
Wide-eyed fresh and inhaling
Sorcerous BlackWomon She was
Making creating unfailing
Whatever good there wasWhatever magic to be had it was She
By degrees reaching deeper in me.
And the mythic play played on.
Calling her girlfriend
Calling her soul friend
Her company was all I could to keep
When I moved on yonderTo marry or flounderIn that tired old pageant
Where genders meet
On dubious voyages
In stagnated menships
Her wholeness calmly breezed
Into my amazed dis-ease
To be caught on another trip
Up-creek of those much-traveled seas .

97She seemed for days and days to wait
And watch the life that was mine and not
And all that was prepared
And all that issued forth
From seedlings planted in the plot
Of things designed to make a show
For Someone who clearly wanted to know
What's a soul like you
Going to do with a thing like this?
Before bluejays could awake
I woke myself
Speaking a name I did not know
Shadows only
All still and unknowing
Hovered 'round my bedroom door
For She now was gone
Back into the etherous heaven
Or hell from which She'd come.
And that is what She looked likeIn an autumnal night's dreaming.
Had She stayed past morning
Or at least til the dawning
When icons are tried for their seeming
I'd have come to know Her better though
She still must be unreal
She need not fill all the crannies of my dreams
To walk from the dream into my life.
With certain imperfection
But contented predilection
I'd just want to be with her
As wifeFriend daughter mother
Sister teacher disciple lover.

98

Dorothy LoveA Letter of Apology to Ms. AliceA Short Story
Dear Ms. Alice,
I jest found out somebody been writing you letters in my name .
Honest, Ms. Alice, I never said none 0' that stuff. I don't goes roundmessing wit womens like you . I has my own place and I knows that
nobody like me is gonna even dream ... Well, Ms. Alice, I hope you
do understand what I trying to say here. When yo Cousin Dede told
me you was talking bout some stuff in some kind 0' letter you thought
was from me, her best friend, why, you shoulda seen my broke facecause I know-and this. the God truth-I ain't writ you no letter or
nothing . I always respectful to other worn ens and try and treat
everybody nice and everything, but Lordy, I wouldn't never say none
0' that stuff to nobody. Least 0' all nobody like you, a eduacatedwriter woman. I mean what you want to hear a whole lotta
trashmouth talk bout womens loving other womens for? And what I
know bout som'in like that? Nothin, that's what. I don't know
nothin.i1 bout no womens loving on worn ens period .
'Cept that one time when we was at that fish fry over in Fairfield
and Delton Ivers come sliding up to me and tells me to come round to
the shed wit him in the back . Now everybody knowed Delton was
kinda That Way? So I musta looked at him like he was Crazy's mamacause he just turn up his little pouty mouth and say he wanted to showme something. So I went on wit him and S'ire nough, there was som'in
to see . It was Enolia Glass and that manwoman Jessie Agnes.
Jessie Agnes was on top 0' Enolia jest like a man . Had her skirt
heitched up round her neck ,and she was jest a pumping like it the mostnatu'al thing in the world. Won't no way they was go know me andDelton standing there watching cause they was back up in the coner ona stack 0' old scratchy blankets thowed cross John Glass'-that's
Enolia's daddy-work bench. So we watched the whole thing. Jessie
Agnes, she always wo britches, had tooken off her pants and didn't
have a stitch on under that. She had Enolia's bloomers off, too. Lord,
I never seen nothing like it.
They was making noises too . Not being quiet as they could a been,
probly like they shoulda been cause that's what put nosey Delton on to'em . Jessie Agnes starts asking Enolia did she like it. AndEnolia says I
likes it, Baby, I always likes it. It always good to me. Then she starts

99

to whimper like a little sick puppy. Jessie Agnes had one hand under
Enolia's romp, the other one squeezing her tiddy and she was pushingherself up into Enolia, in and out hard. Moon bright enough to see
everthing.
Enolia reaches over Jessie Agnes' back and starts scratching like a
cat and she moving and wiggling under Jessie Agnes like ain't no
tomorrow. We hear her say aw fuck me bulldagger, fuck me bulldagger, and Bulldagger fucks her. Enolia throws her head back and let it
hang over the table. She ju~t about outa her mind now. Jessie Agnes
musta done som'in wit that hand under her booty, cause Enolia
started sounding like she gon cry and jumping mo like a fish laying up
on that table than a girl.
Then they put theyselves better to each other. Enolia puts her
hands on her own pussy and holds it open for Jessie Agnes. Now I
knows what a woman got and what she ain't got. I'm a woman; mymama one; and I got three sisters, all womens. So I knows ain't no
woman got no thing down there. But I guess Jessie Agnes ain't no
woman, no natu'al one anyway. Cause she got some'in down there. I
didn't see it but I saw her fix hersel f to put it in Enolia's pussy. And
when she do that, Enolia starts cooing real low and gravley. All thetime Jessie Agnes jest stroking away. (Well, that all you can call it,even if it is womens). She keeps her little tight ass in a tight little swirl
pushing and mashing that thing she got into Enolia's pussy.
Enolia still groaning. It getting real good to her now. She starts
flicking her tongue everwhere, biting and licking on Jessie Agnes.
Jessie Agnes grabs Enolia's thighs and pushesl'em way back over herhead, puts her hands down there again and they go it some more.
Then I hear Enolia start to come. She crying and hollering, Jessie crying too. Well damn, I says to Delton, they both coming together.
Enolia's hips start rising to the ceiling like som'in pulling her andJessie up off the table. Jessie gets faster and harder, then she gets realslow and push back off her hands and catches her arms round Enolia's
thigh joints.
Then they come. The more Enolia comes the crazier Jessie Agnes
gets and comes and hollers. And they both jest shaking like they in aearthquake. Then when you figure they all don for, Enolia reaches
down and sticks her finger up Jessie Agnes' asshole and draws it backup her crack real slow. Jessie Angnes hollers like the last lifebloodleaving her. Then they both be still.
I jest looks at Delton and he looks at me. When we back in thehouse, he pleased wit hisself cause' he made me see som'in and now I
can't go round messing wit him bout his being the only one funny
anymore. Delton made me promise I wouldn't tell it to nobody. And I
didn't. Nqt even Dede. And I just told you but you not in Fairfield, 'so100that's alright. Anyway, the only reason! brung it up was to say that's
the onliest thing I ever did wit womens was to watch Enolia and Jessie
Agnes that time. I wouldn't know to do nothing myself and I ain't
thought that much about in the first place. So I know I ain't go write
no love letter to no writer lady and say a whole bunch 0' old trashy
st uff. You know, I bet Delton did that. It jest like him cause I told him
how when Dede bought your book, we slept in one big bed onenight-you, me and Dede while she read it to me. And he start asking
me after that bout doing it wit womens and when I told him he thinkcause he funny everbody is but you a nice woman and a writer and me
and Dede sho ain't never don it he say I ain't been seen wit no men s
lately and me and Dede sure thick enough so maybe us like womens,
too.
Well, even if it was Delton who wrote you, I know he don't mean
harm and just fooling wit me so don't take it bad. Blieve me, Ms.
Alice, me and Dede ain't doing nothing like that. I jest don't havetime for boys anymor that' s all. I'm trying to finish night school andtending that cafe in the daytime plus help raise two IiI sisters at thesame time, so when I got time for anything else, mens , womens,
chilren, dogs , nothing? Dede my best friend so she the one I talk tobout things. But she knows I ain't sent you no love letter though. So I
hope you straight now.
Well, I has to go. I didn't mean to take up so much yo time. I
know you must be very busy. If you feel it though, you can write me. I
hope you doing good. We sho' look forward to reading yo next book.
Take care yourself, hear. Bye for now.
Yours truly,
Anna

101

Katharyn Machan Aal

Regret: A Night PoemIn Connecticut a thin moon
illuminates the sky.
It pulls the tide toward me,
coaxing voices from the sea
that whisper reprimand.
Five days ago we met, we spoke,
I touched your skin, its golden warmtha secret current in that crowded room.
Miles away now I sit as nightdarkens the cooling air.
Alone, on fire, I understandI should have asked you in clear speech
if you desired me.
Woman to woman we might have met,
body to body, name to name,white heat of stars, breathless discoveryof yes from dusk to dawn.

102

~

o
o

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o....

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ell

en

103

Amanda PowellLove Poem
forM.

Lloro mi raza vencida- " Cancion del derrumbe indio, " F . Iramsim
Thi s paper
your fac ethi s morninga morning paper
these accidents :In the street someone touches my breast, by accident; she apologizes
too loud
you a re still home , sleeping
but I touched your breas t, fuller than when I first knew you
just as sen sitive
I get to work
not where you are
Last night you touched my breasts
fuller, thi s time of the monthalmost painful; it could have hurt
and I needed to hurt someone back about something
but it was an accident, what I said
cruel as I could
Mourning
the fine dark hairs around your nipples
Shame
I lash out at you; can't trust myself, can't explain"They try to justify the unjustifiable," says Amparo; she has seen
what I can't imagine"Like sea urchins," I said, the first time I touched your breasts
your face that morning

104

This month, next monthgrateful for a job
tearing us from our work
Taxes absorbing our hours"We shall dry up the ocean until we are rid of the fish"
said a general on the morning news, meaning, the people are the ocean
The shame
my hours
beating the air in the blades of helicopters over the RIo Lempa,
RIo Sumpul
fishermen haul in the small split bodies, pray their children are stillat homePepe draws his finger across his forehead , like a machete"This is how the army tears off the faces of those they kill"
He escaped last year, at fifteen; he brings me
another cup of coffee
I take Rosa's blood pressure as she tellsof changing buses on her way to work in San Salvador"Plastic bags full in the street. Or just the bodies, pieces ofbodies. You never know who you'll see"Arms arenot weapons
not the bodynot your face
not that way
in my hands
but that first time over and overthe hours
in your bed
I take your facein my hands, takethis knowledge over and overNot where you are, but
you touch my face
this paper
my work, the best I can do

105

Jill Drew
THOUGHTS DURING RAPE: Beirut and New York City
Mama, later my daughters told me, mama
you should have killed him, should
should have crawled back to the roomshould have taken a knife, a gun
should have taken his life
for taking you .
My dear, later a lover told me, you
should have screamed, should
should have fought. What on earth
was in your mind, my dear, you
should never have been there not at all .
Killing, I was thinking then,becomes useless . Now today
there is the child buried in the ruins .
The small girl thrownbeside her own mother - the mother's hands
turned upwards through the broken stones
old bloody, and the child's eyes
deadeyes flycovered watchingme.
Walk with me, woman
through the ruins of my city, findthe children . See - the heaps ofyoung girls whowith our permission were converted
by force to death . See - lookthe crosses carved upon their faces.
Put your arms aroundsomeone's mother, someone's child, someone's lover. Sharemy friends, blessed be the ties Put your arms around
me.

106

Bad things happen, mama,in foreign far-off lands.
You should never have been there,
my dear . You should have killed him,mama.
But I was thinking then that I should - no,should not bleed so muchon a Beirut hallway floor.
Victims now aretravesties with our permission,
rapists' numbers for the Red Cross.
The child buried, the mother crushed,
young girls, stacked and still bleeding
so long after. I know all their names.
Reaching down the blood is sticking
on my hands their blood, my blood, ours .
Blessed be the ties .
Walk with me, womanI can show you where our money goes .
Blood dries on walls and sandon our hands in the camps of the world.
What has possessed you, a lover asked
with scorn . We have no camps . You should
should have known, should
should have stayed home, should
remember the ties that bind.
Enough, woman. Hush, children - see
I'm home - for now. No
scars on my face, nocrosses gash my eyes, the man I
should have killed left
no marks on me: bloodstays turning. on my hands .
I know my binding ties.
Listen, children . Rape is a common place Bad things happen here
in this our alien land .
~107

Jill Drew

Sabra Hagar
Ah'len. Welcome.
Ashnabiya. Stranger.
I knew you would return .
Night is coming andyou and I have nowhere
to go. Malesh - never mind.
Come with me now . We will
go to find my family - my daughters,
my sons, my father.
There is much bloodon this road. Ashnabiya,
be careful where you step.
Remember this low wall
we were building
by the garden. They tied
my daughters here - see,like your Christ
but women Christs my Leila, my Jamila,
your friends . After they hadfinished with them, theyused knives and slashedtheir pretty necks.
Their rape, stranger, andyour crucifixion.

108

And our little street
where my boy was always playing.
You know - you would come sometimes
and throw the ball with him.
Yes, yes - my childwith the laughing eyes, myyoungest boy Abdallah,
the servant of God . You loved him, too,
I know. Do not cry, you are welcome
here still . Abdallah has gonewith his grandfather. Tell me, ashnabiya,
how will you serve your God now?
Here - here we are. The house.
There is no garden any longer
and the room we shared so often
in the evening - have you forgotten
not a week ago when we sat here
together? Abdallah slept, even
before we fed him and thenwe lit the lanterns and talked
softly together about our dreams .
Did you listen then? You must listen
now. Abdallah sleeps forever
beneath these stones. He lies besidehis grandfather. Stranger, how will you
carry their dreams for them?
And Ismail? My son Ismail. Oh,
listen to the song we used to singto the night shadows. Do not be
afraid, stranger. . .do you wish
to harm my child? I will not
let you harm him . Do you wish
to kiss my child? I will not
let you kiss him. Do you wish
to take him away? I will not
let you take him. ...And thisis the guardian song we used to sing.
I cannot sing to Ismail. Ashnabiya,
how will you sing that song?
Ismail has been disappeared.
Ah'len, you are welcome here.
~109

Susan Stinson
Ariel's SongI saw a photograph of skulls piled up in a schoolyard, a couple ofcharts, and some blind eyes blown-up larger than life (cataracts causedby the flash). One image I didn't recognize until I read the caption. It
looked like a piece of plywood someone had been hacking at with thewrong end of a hammer, but turned out to be a boy's back, standing
up in tufts, and cracked.
The pictures were black and white.
I never could have looked so long if I had noticed right away that
it was a picture of a human. It was late morning, hot. Women werewrapping themselves in black and picking out pictures to wear to the
Seneca Army Depot, where we believe nuclear weapons are stored. I
had just eaten an orange and a slice of sourdough bread. Elaine wassick. She had the shakes all night, her night in jail. Barb was on thephone with her mom, trying to explain the point of civil disobedience.
I was quiet.
The photographs had been taken soon after the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. Photographers choose subjects and angles, but I
don't believe that these pictures could have been taken dishonestly.
The lie here was that I could look away, could reach out and touch
Elaine, although I didn't, could reach out and touch the dirt and listen
to the soft talk of the women planning their vigil at the gate . I could
turn the pictures on their backs and see only cardboard, or rip them up
and see trash. Some people from the town did that. They hated to see
things litter "their" fence, the depot fence.
A guy in a pick-up truck full of kids pulled over at the main gateof the depot as a group of women kept vigil there. He demanded "aspokesman" (emphasis his). A woman responded, listening to him forabout twenty minutes. Every now and then one of the kids in the backyelled, "Go home!" He objected to the presence of lesbians at thecamp, but his main complaint was against all of the messy banners flying near the road . He didn't like the origami peace cranes hanging on
the fence, either. He said, "You don't need that stuff any more.
People driving by know who you are and what you want. The wholecountry knows . Clean up the yard and take that stuff down."
The women at the Seneca Encampment for a Future of Peace and110

Justice faced the fence that surrounds the depot, noted its powers ofconcealment and division, and then tried to transform it. They
climbed over the fence, slid under it, sang through it, talked throughit, and made it into a backdrop for yarn webs and photographs of suffering. The army responded with a symbol of its own: a yellow line
was painted in front of the gate, and women were told that they must
not cross it. Women danced across it, or crawled, and reenacted
deaths on the other side. They were detained, or arrested, or simply
watched . The process scared me, because the army symbolizeo its
intentions with uniforms, clubs, and razor wire, against the scarvesand face paints of the women.
Walking back to camp from the gate one day, I waved to two
people sitting on lawn chairs in their garage . Their grass was lined with
American flags. Joe waved back, and offered me some iced tea. Stasi a
brought me a sandwich with thick slices of tomato from her garden,
and told me about being a welder during World War II . We didn't
know each other, but Joe had noticed me walking to and from the gate
before. He said I always looked tired . He offered to let me take ashower. I did . Stasia played "Winchester Cathedral" on the organ forme. Joe said he didn't care to discuss Cruise and Pershing II missiles,
but added, "Two weeks ago, they had a regular marching band, thosegirls, and some were dressed up, up on stilts. Now, that was something
different. Those girls were clever. But when you mess with the federal
government, you're messing with a delicate thing."
Americans bombed Hiroshima on August 6, 1945; three days
later they bombed Nagasaki . Now, in August 1983, a woman commemorated those three days by sitting at the main gate , fasting andkeeping silent. I sat with her alone for a while. The beat of her drum,
the heat and quiet of the day, and the seriousness of what we weremarking made me want some poetry. All I had in my mind right thenwas Shakespeare, the enslaved spirit Ariel's song from The Tempest .
Full f athoms five thy fa ther lies,
Of his bones are coral macle:
Those are pearls that were his eyes:
No thing of him that cloth f ade,
But doth suf f er a sea-change
Int o something rich ancl strange.
Sea ny mphs hourly ring his knell:
Hark no w I hear them - cling-dong bell.

I said it aloud, but I don't know if the silent woman or the silent
MP could hear in my voice what I heard in those lines: the dead ofHiroshima and Nagasaki, of Auschwitz and Buchenwald, the tortured111

and murdered of El Salvador and South Africa, the Native Americans
dying near uranium mines, the workers dying at Rocky Flats, the battered women, the raped women, and all of the leeched poor honored
and mourned . I repeated the poem, saying "thy mother," and "hereyes ." The skulls in the schoolyard were not coral, blinded eyes are
not pearls, but a sea change, as wide and deep as the sea, that will takethe results of our own brutality and force us into new ways "rich andstrange" is the only way to honor those dead, the only way to do
justice to those living.

Greenham Common

Beverly A 'Court
112

Helena Lipstadt
PICTURES FROM SENECA: A Jew Riding The Edge
prologue: it's the pictures that get me. the ones of jews with theirhands in the air, bundles of belongings hanging. it's the look on thefaces of the soldiers. somehow i can look at the soldiers' faces and examine them.
i look for signs of depravity. that would reassure me. it wasmadness.
i seek a questioning look, for a crack in the steely facade. don't
those with power ask questions?
i can't look at the jews' faces for very long. i hardly see theirfaces. i see my own agony of identification . are these pictures from thewarsaw ghetto? my father and mother were both there till just before
the uprising. my father's mother was taken away-disappeared-one
afternoon. i don't know what she looked like. is that her, in the
picture?
i see myself, singled out, separated from the human race. i write
slowly. i don't want to betray myself.

**********
end of july 1983 . a group of seven women from the coast of
maine, me included, go to seneca falls, n.y. blue hill women for peaceand justice. we caravan to the women's peace encampment. we go toprotest the deployment of cruise and pershing missiles in europe, toprotest the war mentality .
as a group we agree on several things: we think nuclear weapons
are insane and lead to nuclear war. we fear for the future of the earth.
we are moved to act. we know if we want to survive , to write, to makemusic, to create, we must act.
as a group, we face external pressures. we face the tension of putting ourselves up against the soldiers who guard the army depot, thetension of confronting the angry fearful people who live in towns surrounding the depot. the tension of acting as free women when we'retold again and again by those towns people "go home, take care ofyour children, clean up your own house."
we are a group made of strong individuals-few are as fiercely individual as feminists. we voice our needs to each other as weunderstand them. they sometimes conflict. i try hard to keep a lid on
my insecurities, tone down my annoyances, but far from home, facing
113

hostility and possible physical danger, they do pop up. i want to givethe reader a sense of our di fferences but i don't want to get anyone
riled up. why?
as a jew, i feel acutely one phenomenon of my people: we havebeen kicked out of country after country. in one way, my country is
my lesbian community. i don't want to create the reason for getting
kicked out of it. if i upset someone by writing down my views, how
secure is my place? will i be harassed, ostracized?
the radio news is on as i write. public radio . liberal. tolerable . today a jewish state legislator from west hartford connecticut has herhouse torched. it is the 4th connecticut torching in two months . two
synagogues, a rabbi, before her. today is yom kippur.

two of us in the group are jews. we acknowledge that to eachother from time to time . it is a help to me that there is another jew in
the group. that is a understatement.
having her there, is like having someone from my family there,
like a cousin. i know she is awake and sensitive to her jewishness.
perhaps with two of us jews there i can lower my defensive hackles,
can relax my sense of measuring jewish safety - like a thermometer- "is it hot for a jew here?"i notice that often i feel i am the only jew in the group. one day weall paraded thru the streets of waterloo on a march from seneca falls
to the army depot. we were blocked on our way by a mob, fists
holding small american flags and growling . they growled, "commie,
queer and jew."
for me, commie was a choice, and queer was a choice, and jew
was what i was born to. i felt my jew self burningly obvious, from thedark curls on my head to the bunions on my feet and i felt alone, obvious and alone, as the jew self i could not, would not deny. i didn't
speak about what i noticed and felt about being a jew in that situation.

**********
there's this 50 acre farm that the women's peace encampment
organizers bought. it butts up against the army depot. it fronts alongstate route 96. the land is flat and open, fields, with spotty hedgerows.
cars drive by, windows open, faces peer out, sometimes shouting.
the army depot is surrounded by chain link fence with a barbed
wire topping. soldiers sit at sentry towers. they are trained to use theirguns to kill.
i feel righteous about my presence at the women's peace encamp114

ment. i think the soldiers feel righteous, too. i 've always had questions
about righteous meets righteous. who decides?
one night i overheard a conversation between a soldier and one
woman in charge of security at the peace encampment. the soldier hadcome by to talk. there seemed to be a crack in his allegiance to themilitary. he wanted to warn us about the moods of the m.p.'s thatnight, how it would be their first night off duty in a week, how they
were drinking, how they wanted to "bust ass."
they were threatened by us. hearing that, i felt a shadowed pride.
something in our presence was affecting them. it might have been that
we seemed wild and unpredictable . i think some were dumbfoundedby our actions. one group of women had climbed the fence into thedepot, climbed a 100 foot plus water tower and painted over the armyslogan, and left undetected. to the soldiers, what was the point ofgroups of women climbing the fence to meditate inside and letthemselves be arrested?
i climbed that fence myself, careful not to get caught in the barbed wire, to land lightly on my feet, to give the m.p. my hands behind
my back for the cuffs. i looked into his face, straightforward looks ,questioning looks. i hoped to crack his mask. i felt such a thick mixture of pride in acting on my beliefs, shame at being bound and herded
like a reviled creature, unity with the other women there - both thosearrested and those who sent their hearts over the fence with us;
moments of feeling like a child allowed to act out her rebellion and achild-like innocence - a rope-strong kind of innocence that saw theworld as it could be .
once inside i knew they wouldn't brutalize us. i had been afraid ofthat. the woman m.p. who guarded us as we waited to be processed
told us they were ordered to act "professional," cool. . .and for themost part they did. i did sense the hair on their necks rising as our loudsinging became clapping and stamping too.
and they let us go. processed and warned, they drove us in buses
to the gates. we were picked up by women and brought back to thepeace encampment.

**********
i always write the full name . women's peace encampment. i havenoticed how i feel when i say the word "camp." i have a genetic
memory of the word. there i was with hundreds of other womenvoluntarily putting myself next to killing-trained soldiers. there isbarbed wire; the soldiers, and the wire, and the mentality ofrighteousness and power flash back 40 years.
my mother warns me, "don't draw attention to yourself." forty
115years ago, for her, and for my father, not drawing attention tothemselves was a survival tactic. they survived the war by hiding in acellar for a year and a half.
i can't help drawing attention to myself. i always find myself inthe minority-as a jew, as a lesbian, as a city transplant in the
country-and i'm not going to let any of those parts of me wither. i've
been thinking lately about "fitting in." i don't 'want to wear my differences like battle cries, but i'm not quiet about who i am. it's kind oflike genetics, like being the wild grass at the edge of a turf farm calling, "remember when we created our own destinies, when we grew
spikey and tough and in clumps?"
my mother's warning entices me sometimes . don't draw attention, hide, be quiet, and it will be over. in low moments i long to draw
my blankets over my head. i could be so still. no one would know i wasthere.
in world war II the nazis aimed to eradicate some of us - jews,
homosexuals, radicals, gypsies . today, that same mentality pulls out
the stops . we're all earmarked in nuclear holocaust, even our pets andour houseplants. the scope is so great as to be numbing at times. mymother tells me that as a jew in poland she felt no one in the outside
world cared . i've heard, though, that some jews survived theholocaust by their need to tell the world what they witnessed . they feltthat there were people who cared, who knew right from wrong.
i felt like a witness at seneca, like my eye was the eye of justiceand could pierce the steely masks of those m.p. 's who were justfollowing orders.
there's moral strength in the witnessing role and an optimism
about people really knowing in their hearts what's right and wrong
and caring about that, too .
i have pictures of my group from the peace encampment. we lookbound to one another. physically we sit very close. our expressions areserious, sometimes agonized. pervading them is a sense of being on theedge of action-reviewing, regrouping, renewing. we have made achoice this time, to come to this place. my family in the ghetto didn't
have that option. sometimes i sit inside the pictures of the war years
and stare straight through time to now. i ache now with family loss,
burn with my righteous power. a jew riding the edge, saying neveragain, not to me, not to any of my people, not to my home . over mylive body.

116

Estrella Rootfrom The Dinosaurs Could Come Back
The 10 minute/ two day warning caught me taking the clothes outof the dryer jogging on the edge of my seat as karen was about toescape from her evil captor on one life to live taking the hamburger
out of the freezer typing up those memos for the boss changing thebaby watching my kids' little league game, sleeping, coming homefrom work on my way to work breaking up a fight between the kids
picking up a quick bite at denny's getting my d&c in the hospital, in along line to see the latest epic disaster movie mowing the yard, at the
p .t.a. meeting the health spa the bar the church basement in my livingroom in my office in the carport at the check-out register charging
what i can't afford paying the phone bill watching the memorial day
parade.
o shit! they really did it i thought, and the kids are at school,
harvey's at work and i am all alone .
What am i supposed to do now? Buzz out of town dig a shelterand cover it with a tarp? Oh, yes and the canned food and bottled
water? Well i left them in the garage or are they in melvin's car? I
guess i'll meet him in that farmer's field where we said we would dig
our hole if we had to. The earth looked soft there .
I hope george can make it, and the kids will be safe wherever they
are evacuating them to. They sure don't give you much time. There
are only five minutes/ two days left. Maybe i should just go for one ofthose signs, wasn't there one in city hall in the basement?
o no! the traffic's getting really bad already, 0 shit! it looks like iam stuck .
This is really something isn't it, dying in a trafficjam on the way
home from work on the way to the bank taking the clothes out of thedryer.
I hope irving and the kids are all right.

**********
The 10 minute/ two day warning caught me taking the clothes off
the line doing my yoga writing a poem rinsing the sprouts typing up
those self-criticisms for the collective changing the baby watching thekids play barbie dolls in total amazement sleeping, coming home fromwork on the way to work on my way to the garden breaking up a fightbetween the kids picking up a quick carrot juice at the vegie restaurant
117getting my d&c at the women's health services in a short line to see thebenefit planting herbs in the backyard, at the coalition meeting the hottubs the bar in the basement of the church that lets us have our elsalvador meetings there, in the meditation retreat in jail under the carchanging the gasket scoring an ounce, at the check-out register of the
co-op, spending too much money at the thriftstore paying the phonebill calling my sister my ex-lover talking to my mom watching the gayday parade.
o shit! they really did it said i and the kids are at the free schoolrolling stone is at the co-op faith healer is in flushing visiting her folks
and una mae is off with her other girlfriend . . .. and she's got thetruck.
So i guess i'm stuck here at home waiting for all the cityfolks tobuzz up and dig holes in my yard there's nothing for me to do but go
into the garden and wait five minutes/ two days to die out there by thecompost pile.
I always did want to become compost, but i guess i'll be too contaminated to be of much use to the chard and spinach. Thinking of mylittle chard and spinach just makes me want to cry. Oh well, at least i
get to go with the vegetables and kiss my calendulas good-by.
I hope the kids are all right.

**********
There was no warning .
I was washing our clothes in the river praying making tortillas
picking bananas cleaning up the baby picking coffee with the ninos
sleeping in my hammock coming home from picking bananas on theway to work at the sugar plantation taking a few bites of an old tortilla
getting a hysterectomy at the mission hospital going to the fiesta
planting some beans, at the school the church the bus station, buying a
coca-cola, en mi coso, at the mercado selling my embroidery tolurislas, buying something for the kids that i can't really afford,
thinking about my sister, talking to my abuela watching the seman a
sonIa parade.
We are all here together and there comes such a flash and noisefrom the yanqui air base. My son is there working in the kitchen. I
hope he is all right.
After the second flash and noise, i remember nothing.

118

Let it be clear all you generals and politicians and corporate
upper crust that you are not going to be saved. You may think yourdoomsday jets and leadlined hideaways are going to protect you while
the rest of us common humanity fries and dry roasts and dies slowly of
the fallout thirsting and starving to death and you are going to be left
afterwards so you can do things exactly the way you want with us
pesky scum out of your way .
But you are the real scumbags, obvious fact, having made up
these evil schemes and machines, and i want you to know you crazybastards are not going to get away with it, no matter how much you
think you are.
The earth will swallow you the winds will blow your jets down
those concrete mountains will crack and the deadly smoke get on you
too, you will not be any different, you will die with us, feeling evenmore guilty and like fools for having thought you were such hot shit
when you will commonly die like us all, and in pain and miserablyalone.
No one will love you when you die no one will wish you well and agood journey. The rest of us may not have jets or bunkers or lead
mountains but we will have some loving arms and comfort in ourgoing. Even though we will be regretting that we didn't stop you intime, we will share some caring as we pass .
But you will die loveless and you will die alone and without heirs
and in the next world no one will give your wicked ways a second
glance.
You are finished, played out, your empires are crumbling and thedays are not many that you will be able to project your lies and deceit
and have us believe that things are as you say .
The earth that you have battered used and abused andmanipulated for your own sleazy ends is taking back the night andtaking back the day and there is NO WAY that you can stop her.
Judgment day is upon you, men of evil designs, and no one is going tobelieve you when you say (white, european) CIVILIZATION is sosuperior and wonderful and all about the wonders of modern scienceand technology and all the stupid crap you sell with that line .
All the former buyers will be cursing your names and yourtechnology and no one will love it anymore, or you.
No one will think it's all right for you to steal the largest share foryourselves, and hand out payoffs to those who will co-operate in yourtheft, corporate vampires. No one will cook for you and clean up yourmesses and fly you around wherever you want to go . The riviera will
be in cinders, gone, the mansions and the island vacations and the119rollsroyces and the private jets and the buildings and banks that you
own, all of them gone.
Your fancy shelters that you think you can buy survival with will
collapse in the quaking of the mother's righteous wrath . The security
guards won't follow your orders, or the cops, anymore, or the fbi or
secret service, no one will serve you, and your henchmen the politicians and military will not be saved to serve you either.
Everyone will be dead or hating you and cursing your name.
You will not survive to make another empire, to be a king or anemperor or general or presidente or chairman, it's all over for you,just like it's all over for us.
And it is ever so possible that all of us common humanity withour common sense and ordinary spirits will get it together to unhorse
you from your seats of power, take down the weapons, stop the war
before it is too late.
Yes that is possible too, that your schemes to kill us all and survive yourselves will not even get to first base, we the people will strike
you out, that first strike will be ours.
We will bring you low where you belong scum of the patriarchy
we will say no to war in a way that you will hear us, we will MAKE
you hear us WE WILL STOP THE NUCLEAR WAR.
But if we do not, if we cannot stop it in time do not believe thatyou will win anything, for there is no place to run there is no place tohide the mountains will be crumbling like your empires the moon willbe bleeding like your veins the rock will be weeping like your eyes
there is nowhere you can run nowhere to go, all on that judgment day.

**********
There is a button it says DON'T DIE WONDERING and i say
people don't die regretting don't die passively don't die from thehands of men don't die massively.
I say don't die uselessly don't die afraid don't whimper about
how you never did anyone any harm and always tried so hard. Don't
say 0 shit! they really did it, don't die disbelievingly and don't say ishould have known better, too late.

120

WHAT A WIND HAS COME TODAY, LIKE TO BLOW ALL
MY PAPERS AWAY, WHAT A WIND IS BLOWING ON THIS
DESERT TODAY.
AND THERE'S A BIGWIND GONNA COME THEY SAY A
MIGHTY WIND COMING ALL ON THAT DAY AND TREESAND CARS WILL GET BLOWN AROUND LIKE MY PAPERS,YOU GOING TO HA VE TO HIDE FROM THAT WIND
UNDERGROUND AND THAT WIND CAN BLOW THE FIRE
HOT AND FAST CRASH IN YOUR WINDOWS THROWEVERYTHING AROUND LIKE THEY WERE BEER CANS AND
BUBBLEGUM WRAPPERS WITH A ROARING BLAST.
WHEN I GO TO SLEEP THE NIGHTWIND CARESSES MY
BODY WITH THE SWEET COOL OF THE EVENING
SOMETIMES THE WIND BRINGS RAIN TO GREEN THE
EARTH SOMETIMES THE WIND CARRIES MY LOVETHOUGHTS TO DISTANT DEAR ONES. SUCH A FRIEND
WIND HAS BEEN TO ME, A TEACHER OF SONG TO US ALL.
BUT THAT DOES NOT MEAN THE BIGWIND THAT IS
COMING WILL PASS ME BY, WILL SPARE ME AND MINEALL ON THAT DAY, ALL ON THAT DAY I MAYBE PURSUEDI MAY BE BLESSED I DO NOT KNOW. ONLY THE WINDKNOWS.
BUT I CAN ALMOST HEAR THE WIND SAYING NOW AS
THE PAPERS FLY YOU COULD HA VE MADE IT DIFFERENT,
KEPT THEM FROM POISONING THE EARTH SO BADL Y, YOU
WOULD NOT BE CA UGHT IN THE WRETCHING IF THERE
WERE NO POISON POISON, WHY DID YOU NOT HELP THE
PEOPLE OF THIS RED RED EARTH, YOU CRIED FOR THEM,
BUT THE SONG SA YS WHA T DID YOU DO FOR THESE ONES?
AND I SA YWHA T HA VE YOU DONE FOR THESE ONES,WHA T GOOD ARE YOUR TEARS TO THEM?
I built a corral for an old woman, i went to a conference and &ave
them a little bit of money for the paperplates, that's all, not much iknow i could have done more.
DID YOU THINK YOU WOULD NOT FACE THE JUDGEMENT? DID YOU THINK THA T BECA USE THERE ARE
OTHER MORE EVIL ONES ON THE EARTH THAT YOU WILL
BE SPARED? ALL WILL FACE IT, NONE CAN TURN AWA Y.
YOU KNEW ABOUT THE URANIUM THA T CAME FROM INDIAN LANDS, ABOUT THE BIRTH DEFECTS AND CANCER

121

AT PINE RIDGE AND RED ROCK, AND WHAT DID YOU DO?
I have no innocence. I was born into this world probably not for
the first and only time, i have participated again and again in different
ways in the deadly series of serious mistakes called history, there are
no innocents here i am a responsible part of this world.
FLESH OF THIS WORLD BONES OF THIS WORLD MY
DA UGHTER MY SISTER YOU WILL ALL FACE WHAT YOU
HA VE DONE AND DID NOT DO YOU CANNOT A VOIDRESPONSIBILITY YOU MUST FACE THE WORLD YOU HA VE
MADE WITH THE OTHERS, IT IS YOURS. AND YES THE
WORLD IS A T ITS MOST EVIL TIME AND YOU ARE THE
MOST DEFEA TED AND BURDENED WITH THE CONSEQUENCES OF YOUR DEADLY ERRORS, IT IS HARDER NOW
IT SEEMS TO SET IT RIGHT THAN WHEN IT WAS LESSWRONG, EVIL IS SO STRONG, THE POISONING SO
WIDESPREAD FROM YOUR CONTINUOUS FAILURES TO
HALT IT. BUT WHAT CAN YOU DO, DAUGHTER? WHATELSE CAN YOU DO BUT TR Y TO PURIFY THE FLESH ANY
WA Y YOU CAN, HEAL THE BONES?
I can weep and hide and sigh for my powerlessness.
THE WIND WILL COME ANYWA Y.
I can pretend there is no poison, drink deeply and say this world
has no sickness.
THE WIND WILL COME.
I can huddle in a hole with my beloveds and cling to themwaiting.
THE WIND WILL FIND YOu.
To heal this suffering there is so much, how to begin there are somany questions. .. .
THERE ARE ALWAYS QUESTIONS, THEY SLIDE INTOETERNITY LIKE OUR LAST MOMENTS ON EARTH ARE SLIPSLIDING AWAY LIKE EACH PRECIOUS MOMENT FLIESWHEN FLESH CRIES FOR HEALING AND SWEETGRA T1TUDE A WAITS THE TOUCH OF REAL HANDS WORKING ....

122

Contributors' Notes _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ __Katharyn Machan Aal is the Director of the Women's Writing Workshops, which in1984 wi ll be held at Wells College from July 15-28. Her interview with Jud y Grahn ispart of The Writer as Peljormer, a stud y of con temporary poetry and fiction readings.
For more details abou t the Women' s Writing Workshops, write to her at 714 N . Tioga
St., Ith aca, NY 14850. Her most recent published collect ion is Wo men: A Pocket Book
(Grass Root s Press, 1983).
Beverly A 'Court: I've always done little drawings but di sm issed th em as "dood les" . I
live in Scotland, by the sea, with 4 other lesbians, making wallhangings in wool, cloth,wood, wire, etc., on themes to do with the countrys id e here, and the tin y lichens and lifethat grow. I'm 30. White. English.
Paula Gunn Allen, Ph . D.; MFA; BA (Laguna Pueblo / Sioux / Lebanese -American) b.
1939, Albuquerque, raised Cubero, New Mexico, a Spanish-Mexican Land Grant
vi ll age. Her poetry, essays and fiction have appeared in numerou s journals and anthologies . Poetry chapbooks: Th e Blind Lion (1975); Coyote's Daylight Trip (1978);Star Child (1981); A Cannon Between My Knees (1981). Books : Shadow Country (1982)
poetry; The Woman Who Owned the Shadows (San Francisco: Spinsters Ink , 1983)
novel; and Studies in American Indian Literature (editor, Modern Language Association, 1983). Received an NEA Fellowship for Writing in 1978, a Post-doctora lfellowship in American Indi an Studies, UCLA in 198 1. Presentl y a visi tin g lecturer in
Native American Studies at University of California, Berkeley.
Tata Andres is an artist and poet who li ves in Negril, Jamaica
Anita Bigelow is a graphic artist who lives in Portland , Oregon .
SDiane Bogus (pronounced es-di-ann) is a Black lesb ian feminist writer formerly from
Chicago, now known more widely in California a nd in the Midwest. She is in the thirdyear of study at Miami University , Oxford, OH, for her Ph.D. in twentieth-century
lit erature, and is looking forward to returning to touring and fu ll -time writing by Juneof 1985. She is the author of four book s, the most recent, Sapphire's Sampler (1982).
Beth Brant: A Detroiter , a Bay of Quinte Mohawk, a mother, a lesbian. Editor of A
Gathering oj Spirit, Sinister Wisdom's issue by North American Indi an women . Currently doing work with women in prison, and putting together a manuscript ofsongs/stories about the people of her families: blood, gay, and working-class.
Maria lannacome Coles : I was born in the province of Abruzzi in Italy after the war andimmigrated to the U.S. with my family when I was fifteen. Settled in the large Italiancommunity in Rochester, NY , I came to know immigrant life, it s toil, it s wholenesswithin and marginality to American culture. After high school and two years of college
I tran sferred to SUNY at Buffalo where my early European socialism was revived
through an understanding of the U.S. from its internal conditions of immigrants,
women, to its world politics . I wi ll have work in a forthcoming anthology of ItalianAmerican women writers.
Gretchen Cotrell : Cree Me-tis descendant of the Little Shell Band of the Ch ippewa-Cree;I grew up in the Flathead, in Western Montana, and have been a social worker in L.A .
for a long time; published in Applezaba's Anthology oj Long Beach Poetry, Stone
Cloud 7, A lcatraz 2, and American In dian Culture and Research Journal: Special Metis

Issue.

123

Jill Drew : I was wo rkin g for disarmament and trying to get my Art Hi story degree at
Fordham, havin g just pushed two-thirds of my children out of the home due to a dvancin g age (min e) and dimini shing tolerance (also mine) . When everyone was young and being free out west, I had go tten a degree in Nursing. Well anyhow there was Beirut andsince I knew how to be a trauma nurse , I fe lt I had no choice but to go ... .I think I had
been a hypocrit e a ll my life. About so man y things-not just war. The only thin g I ever
did th a t wasn't hypoc riti cal was to keep my children safe out west as lon g as I could andto writ e ...
Jud y Grahn's hi story of gay culture, A nother Mother Tongue, will be out in September ,1984, from Beaco n Press. Th e Queen of Wands is her most recent poetry book (Crossin g Press) . . She teach es classes in writing and in gay culture at Mama Bears Coffee
House in Oakland, CA .
Elaine Hall : I am thirt y-two years old , I' m a mi xed -blood Creek lesbian from Alabama.
I now li ve in Los Angeles wit h my lover of ten yea rs, Ardera Sharkan. I a m li vi ng with achronic illn ess (lupu s) , I writ e poems and stori es, and a m currently at work o n myseco nd novel.
.fEB just ed it ed S('('in~ WOlllen , a 1984 ca lend ar of women photographers. She has a!l l'W slid e/ talk show based o n thi s summer's Women' s Peace Enca mpm ent a t the Seneca
Ar lll Y Depot. Help supp o rt a lesb ia n photographer and brin g her to yo ur town .
IIl·th Karbe: I am a dyke ph o tograp her primarily in terested in lesb ian portraiture andthe creation a nd preservat ion or images ' th a t reflect lesbian st rength , struggie , a nd
wisdo m .
Melanie Kaye/ Kantrowitz recently took back the name behind Kaye. She is an activist,
writer, ed itor , and teacher. Her book of poetry, We Speak in Code, is available throughSinister Wisdolll, and her work is included in Fight Back! Feminist Resistance to Male
Violence (Cleis Press), Nice Jewish Girls (Crossing Press), & elsewhere. She teaches
part-time in the Adult Degree Program at Vermont College, Montpelier , VT.
Jacqueline Lapidus is a magazine editor in Paris, where she has been li ving since 1967.
Her lates t publi cat ion (with Tee Corinne) is Yantras of Wo manlo ve (Naiad), and her
third collection of poems, Ultilllate Conspiracy, is looking for a publisher . She has beenpassionately in vo lved with Brazil and Brazilian lesbian feminists for the past ten yea rs .
Helena Lipstadt : i've li ved for the past 5 years on the coast of maine , marinating, as it
were, and feel the st irrings of man y family st ories. i am laboring to give birth to thesesto ries. i am the daughter of holocaust survivors .
Dorothy D. Love is a resident of Los Angeles, California, originally from Atlanta,
Georgia. She has st udied many areas of the arts on both coasts, but assiduously avoided
obtaining a degree since she considers them less meaningful than identifying and performing one's own work . She is a Lesbian Feminist Afro-American and a IO-year practitioner of Raja Yoga. She started writing in h r early teens when a n eighth-grade teacher
imposed diary-keeping on her and classmates, and she quickly discovered that she liked
it , could do it, and knew more about doing it than anyone had ever taught her to know .
Although previ ously unpubli shed, Ms. Love' s first volume of poetry is scheduled to be
published in 1984 by WIM Publications.

124Juana Maria Paz is a New York-born Puerto Rican lesbian whose daughter Mary Ann i
8 years old. In the 7 years they have received AFDC they have lived in several states &Juana has worked as a writer, publisher & radio & TV producer. She presently coordinates a prison reading project that makes reading materials available to incarcerated
Third World women. She is the author of The La Luz Journal, true story of lesbian ofcolor land. She & the Prison Reading Project can be contacted c/ o Paz Press, P.O . Box
3146, Fayetteville, AS 72702 . "Testimony of a Welfare Mother" won 3rd prize in the1983 Second AnnuaJ Latino / a Essay Contest, sponsored by Gay & Lesbian Latinos
Unidos & The Garcia Lorca Educational Fund .
Phoenix: i write for anyone else who believes survival is an unnatural act. i don't write
for men , ever. i'm learning to integrate laughter & poetry, & i never sound this educatedin person. magyar / russia n 3rd generation american jew . i am not a feminist.
Amanda Powell: 1 work as a poet and free-lance translator (Spanish to Engli sh) , journalist, editor; have done plenty of office work, waitressing, and have worked in feminist
women's health centers in Spain and Cambridge. I' m a white, genti le, middle-classmedium-sized double Aquarius, & wild about women & all we ca n do.
Gretc hen Pullen lives in San Francisco. She is completing a Master's program in theteaching of English as a foreign language and hopes to teach in an adult education setting.
Sudie Rakusin is a painter and grap hic artist. She has recentl y published Goddesses &A lIIlI~OIlS, a notebook with 48 or iginal drawings and ma ny blank pages for your usc,
ava ilabl e, P.O. Box 88 , Brooke, VA 22430.
Estrella Root is a writer and an anti-nuclear pro-children activist in northern New Mexico. The Dinosaurs Could Come Back, selections from which are printed here, is looking for a publisher.
Linda Smukler , a lesbian writer, was born in Cleveland, Ohio, and raised in thesuburbs. She now lives in New York City. She belongs to a writing group called
Overload, which came together in workshops given by Gloria Anzaldua. The Tales arepart of a longer work-in-progress.
Maria Stecenko: My parents were Ukrainian refugees, fleeing StaJin's regime . I wasborn in a displaced person's camp in Mittenwald, Germany, in 1947, and grew up in
America . Currently I'm working as a typesetter in the Bay Area . "Restricted Wing
1968" is the first chapter of my first novel.
Susan Stinso n: I am a twenty-three-yea r-old writer who is trying to learn to li ve anhonest, responsible life. I just moved from Colorado, where I was raised and educated,to the Boston area, where I have an id iotic job in a drugstore .
Ruchele ZeOeh has a degree in Radio Broadcasting, wrote, edited and recorded theweek ly Woman's World in Escondido, California, and has published ninety inches ofjournalism copy with bylines. Her poetry is published in Poetry / LA, and she read in thelast Poetry Festival at CSU Dominguez Hills where she is a student returnee .
Arline Zimmerman : Born in 1932. Grew up an Italian protestant during the Depression,in Cleveland. Came out in early fifties in California when it seemed there were only 10of us. In mid-sixties married a stra ight Jewish male while remaining "gay." Such livingon the "margins" produces a world of material for a novel, titled Name the Dragon ;also a second novel, titled My Burden is not Easy. Currently involved in st rong coffee,
astrology and Brazilian mu sic.

125

Announcements

Alliance of Woman Arlisans is forming. For in format io n co nt act Lee Hi gdon , PO Box
1052, Gat lin burg, TN 37738.
THIS BRIDG E CALLED MY BACK : Writings by Radical Women of Co lor need smoney for repri ntin g by Kitchen Table: Women of Co lo r Press. Make c hecks payab le to
Kitchen Table or Wo r kin g Women's In st itute for tax-deductib le do nation s. Low interest loa ns grat efu ll y accep ted. Write to: Kit chen Table Press, Box 2753, Rockefeller
Ccnt er Sta ti o n , NY, NY 10 185 .
Les bians : Interested in li ving toget her in the count ry? You don't need a ny money to join
us. Write La nd Gro up, PO Bo x 8 122, Minneapoli s, MN 55408 .
CONFERENCE ON LESBIAN PSYCHOLOGIES organized by The Boston Chaptero f the Associa ti on for Women in Psyc hology to be held Ma rch 9- 11, 1984 a t the P a rk
Plaza Hotel in Boston . For pre-reg ist ration materials, wri te Reg istra ti o n Co mmitt ee,
B.A.W.P., PO Box 1267, Jamaica Plain, MA 02 130 . Pre-registration dead lin e:
Feb ruary 10.
LES BIAN ETHICS , a new journal invi tes yo ur sup port, articles, subscriptions, andcomme nt s. Write: PO Box 943, Venice, CA 01204.
Submiss ions wanled. THE TH INGS THAT DIVID ES US: Stories by Wom en on
Racism, C lassism and Anti-Semiti sm. A col lec tion of fiction to be pub li shed by the Seal
Press, 312 S. Washington, Seatt le, WA 98104. SASE. Max length 5,000 word s. Stories
ma y have appeared before in periodicals. Deadline May I, 1984 .
INTE RNATIO NAL CONFER ENCE ON LESBIAN / GAY HEALTH to be held in
New York City, June 16- 19, 1984. Send inquiries and proposals to Fern Schwaber, Suite
1305,80 Eig hth Avenue, New York, NY 10011 .
Aunl Lule Book Co mpan y is seek ing ma nuscript s for publication in 1984, prim a ril y interested in nonfiction work-sk ill s manual s, political writin gs , collec tion s and anthologies. Send with SASE to Aunt Lu te Book Co., PO Box 2723, Iowa City, IA 52244 .
ARTISTS CALL - a seri es of national a nd intern ation al art even ts in protest again st
U.S. intervention in Centra l America . Will happen in January 1984 (or thereafter) . For
more info con tact A RTISTS CALL 339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 100 12.
CALL FOR PAPERS. Women' s Strugg les: Nonviolent Militancy and Direct Action,a spec ial issue of Women's St udi es Int ern a ti ona l Forum. For mo re info rmation co nt act,
ASAP, B. Carro ll & J . Mohraz , Wome n 's Studies, 4 11 Gregory, U. of Illin ois, 8 10 S.
W ri ght St., Urbana, I L 6 180 I.
WE ' MOON ALMANAC 1984: Astrological Moon Calendar for ~~ for Livin g in Harmony on the Eart h. Ha nd -crafted, exq ui site ly designed, pocket or pac k size. Orderfrom WomanSpiri t , 2000 King Mt. Trail, Wolf Creek, OR 97497. $6-- plus $ I--postage.

126

MOON CYCLE CALENDA R fo r 1984 from The Native American Women's Self Help
Pro ject. Send $5.00 plu s $ l. OO/ postage ($3.50 for ten or more) to Women's Dance
Health Project, PO Box 8958, Lake SI. Stat ion, Minneapo lis, MN 55408 . Thi s calendarfeat ures drawings a nd poetry of Native Women.
Feminist women over 4S years old. Wanted: articles, fiction, ca rtoo ns, drawings,
photos, interviews , personal experience, feminist theor y for an a nthology on th e issueof agism from a feminist perspecti ve . Dead li ne: March 15, 1984. Send with SASE to
FEMIN IST PE RSPECTIVES ON AG ISM, c/ o Po ll y Taylo r, 904 Irvin g St., 11258, San
Francisco , CA 94 122.
LESBIA N CONNECTION's annua l W in ter Catalog for Lesb ian s is now avai labl e.
FREE . Mai led di sc reetly . Send name , address a nd zi p code to Ambitious AmazonsCata log, PO Box 8 1 I , East Lan sing , M I 48823 .
T he Femi nist Arab- American Netwo rk , an organization of femin ists of Arab herit age
res id in g in the Uni ted States is in terested in collecting: bibli ograp hi es o n Arab women;
persona l a nd famil y histories; writings on topics of co ncern to Arab-Ameri canfem ini sts; informati o n abou t local projects and ac tivities in whic h yo u a re in vo lved.
Contact F.A.N., PO Box 725, E. La nsing, M I 48823-0625.
NU RSES: At las t there is CASSANDRA, a na tionwide radi ca l feminist nurses' net work. For information, wr it e CASSANDRA, PO Box 341, Wi lli amsvi ll e, NY 1422 l.
JOB. Th e women of THE NAIAD PRESS, INC., will accept app lications a t o nce for apermanent staff posit ion, to be filled early in 1984. Lifelo ng comm itm ent to the Lesbian
femin ist movement and Lesb ian femi nist pub lishing is the principal, understood, requirement. All aspects of our business will be taught to you . THE NAIAD PRESS ,INC. PO Box 10543, Tall a hassee, FL 32302, 904-539-9322 .

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