Sinister Wisdom 83

Identity and Desire
Edited by Merry Gangemi

Sinister Wisdom

Featuring Work by:
Stephanie Barnes
Sally R. Brunk
Merina Canyon
Elana Dykewomon
Anne FairbrotherLiz Demi Green
Azaan Kamau
Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz
Bishop C. Knight
Monisha Lakhotia
Sandra Langer
Cheryl Moore
Lisa L. Moore
Ana Schwartz
Elaine Sexton
Erin Pamela Stewart
Samn Stockwell
Judith K. Witherow
Summer 2011

And More!

$6.00

Identity and Desire83

Publisher: Sinister Wisdom, Inc.

Sinister Wisdom 83
Summer 2011

Sinister Wisdom
A Multicultural Lesbian
Literary & Art Journal

Editors: Merry Gangemi & Julie R. Enszer
Issue Editor: Merry Gangemi
Layout and Design: Julie R. Enszer
Book Review Editor: Robin ní Catáin
Board of Directors: Shaba Barnes, Fran Day, Susan Levinkind, Joan Nestle, Rose
Provenzano, Judith K. Witherow
7NÅKM5IVIOMZ" Susan Levinkind
Proofreaders: Merry Gangemi
Web Design: Sue Lenaerts

The oldest surviving lesbian
literary journal
publishing since 1976
Create, read, write, draw, explore, cry,fantasize, argue, celebrate, learn, teach,laugh, relate with writers and artists like
Gloria Anzaldua, Beth Brant, Crystos, Tee A.
Corinne, Alix Dobkin, Elana Dykewomon,
Ferron, Katherine Forrest, Carolyn Gage,
JEB, Terri Jewell, Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz,)Ta3QU1ZMVI3TMXÅ[b;PIZWV4QU0QVO
Phyllis Lyon, Victoria Lena Manyarrows,
Del Martin, Cherri Moraga, Adrienne Rich,
Sapphire, Barbara Smith, Jean Weisinger,
Cris Williamson, Judith K. Witherow, Merle

Special thanks to: All of the womyn who contributed work in its many forms, ourreaders, and our supporters in the journey.
Front Cover Art: “Wrinkled Egg” by Elaine Sexton;161;<-:?1;,75 founded 1976
Former editors and publishers:
Harriet Ellenberger (aka Desmoines)
and Catherine Nicholson (1976-1981)
Michelle Cliff and Adrienne Rich (1981-1983)
Michaele Uccella (1983-1984)
Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz (1983-1987)
Elana Dykewomon (1987-1994)
Caryatis Cardea (1991-1994)
Akiba Onada-Sikwoia (1995-1997)
Margo Mercedes Rivera-Weiss (1997-2000)
Fran Day (2004-2010)
Sinister Wisdom is a multicultural, multi-class, female-born lesbian space. We seek
to open, consider and advance the exploration of community issues. We recognize\PMXW_MZWN TIVO]IOM\WZMÆMK\W]ZLQ^MZ[MM`XMZQMVKM[IVL\WMVPIVKMW]ZIJQTQ\a
to develop critical judgment, as lesbians evaluating our community and our world.
Statements made and opinions expressed in this publication do not necessarilyZMÆMK\\PM^QM_[WN \PMX]JTQ[PMZJWIZLUMUJMZ[WZMLQ\WZ[WN ;QVQ[\MZ?Q[LWU
Copyright © 2011 Sinister Wisdom, Inc.
All rights revert to individual authors and artists.
ISSN: 0196-1853. Printed in the U. S. on recycled paper.
Subscribe online: www.SinisterWisdom.org
Join Sinister Wisdom on Facebook: www.Facebook.com/SinisterWisdom;QVQ[\MZ?Q[LWUQ[I=;VWVXZWÅ\WZOIVQbI\QWV[#LWVI\QWV[\W[]XXWZ\\PM_WZS
and distribution of Sinister Wisdom are welcome and appreciated.
;QVQ[\MZ?Q[LWU1VK87*W`*MZSMTMa+)!=;)Woo, Julia Youngblood, zana & many more!

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Name
Address
City
State
Email Address

ZipSummer 2011 1

Table of Contents
Table of Contents

1

Notes on a Magazine

3

Where To Find Sinister Wisdom

4

Digital Archive of Sinister Wisdom 1976-2000

5

Red Prayer for a Nun

6

First Confession

7

The Balkans

8

January Dreams
Samn Stockwell10

simple truths
Elana Dykewomon

11

Believing

15

Glass House

16

Rectrix (REK-triks)
Elaine Sexton

17*drive*Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz

18

Photograph 1

20

Photograph 2
Azaan Kamau

21

The Night I Met Bill Casey
Merry Gangemi

22

After Almost Breaking Up
Erin Pamela Stewart

32

A Woman Known Here
Cheryl Moore

33

The Queen of Spades
Liz Demi Green34

Whistling, Waiting
Jessica Mason McFadden

37

The Dress39

2 Sinister Wisdom 83 – Identity and Desire

Park Slope Hookup
Ana Schwartz

40

The Body and Significance: The Art of Linda Stein
Sandra Langer

41

Tom’s Story
Merina Canyon

53

Audre Lorde and David Ruffian in Heaven

57

Sakia Gunn, 15

58

The Day after Breaking
Stephanie Barnes

59

Cinnamon Rolls

60

Acts of Devotion

61

Baby-Daddy
Lisa L. Moore

64

It's Not Their Fault
Monisha Lakhotia

66

Subject to Anatomy
Bishop C. Knight

70

DesireAnne Fairbrother72

Following In Grandmother’s Footsteps
Sally R. Brunk73

Strained Class Windows
Judith K. Witherow

79

Book Reviews

85

Contributors

90

Advertisements

95

Summer 2011 3

Notes on a Magazine
As this issue of Sinister Wisdom took shape, I realized Julie and I had
a compilation of work that offered not only a terrific range of voice andperception, but also a representative body of work which evokes desire—in
so many different ways—from poems of loss and regret, to powerful
longings for, and connection to, culture, family, and imagination; desirethat is carnal and raw, compassionate and insightful, thoughtful andprobing—manifestations often unarticulated in a world that continues tomarginalize us, but yet still reverberate beyond the layered experiences andperceptions so generously shared here by our contributors.
In “Red Prayer for a Nun,” Samn Stockwell asks: “Why trade one
embargo of the soul for another,/ as if we were not both a paste ofdreams/ over a shard of will?” The array of answers are fascinating,running from painful and peculiar relationships of family to the greater
universe of social and cultural markers that claim us as other, or lover,which enfolds us in the endless consequences of racism, classism, sexism,
and the ostracism perpetuated by foiled dreams of financial security, of
education, of emotional safety. Each of the following poems, stories,
narratives, reviews, essays, and herstories claim the necessity of a specificlesbian-centered curiosity and a lesbian desire to bear witness to who weare in our bodies and self-consciousness, our personal physical power, andour defiant desires to thrive in the face of patriarchal privilege andindifference.
We can understand desire in Sally Brunk’s careful understandingof wisdom in “Following in Grandmother’s Footsteps,” or Liz Demi
Green’s positioning of the “[T]hirteen strokes of misfortune,” in her “TheQueen of Spades,” a desire for reconciliation, held up by thedetermination and strength to persevere. We watch Ana Schwartz
acknowledge her feminine beauty in “The Dress” and her sexual
physicality in “Park Slope Hook-Up.”
Stephanie Barnes’s powerful piece, “Audre Lorde and David
Ruffian in Heaven” confirms a desire for interconnection “in theinterlacing intersections/ of black, female, gay.” Monisha Lakhotia’s “It’s
Not their Fault”, articulates desire for the innocence of just being who weare, and Lisa L. Moore’s “Cinnamon Rolls,” with its bravado and desire
for authenticity.
In her thought-provoking poem, “simple truths,” Elana
Dykewomon offers the desire for understanding and accepting how damn
hard it really is to be present in our truths. “[in] the cave I have seen theminotaur” she writes “and death of course/in the cavern the others avoid.”
Even the book reviews of Ruth Mountaingrove and Robin ní Catáin

4 Sinister Wisdom 83 – Identity and Desire

convey desire—intellectually—in the sharing of the books they discoveredand delighted in.
Julie and I thank every one of the lesbian writers who trust us with
their work and continue to believe in the importance of Sinister Wisdom. As
Elaine Sexton tells us in “Believing” we need never become mere
spectators of our lesbian lives, we won’t watch “silent,/ rolling up our
windows” so we don’t see what must be seen.
Merry Gangemi
June 2011

Where To Find Sinister Wisdom
Antigone Books (Tucson, AZ)
Bloodroot (Bridgeport, CT)
Giovanni’s Room (Philadelphia, PA)
Galaxy Books (Hardwick, VT)
In Other Words (Portland, OR)
Bear Pond Books (Montpelier, VT)
Goddard College Library (Plainfield, VT)
Left Bank Books (Hanover, NH)
Dartmouth Barnes and Noble (Hanover, NH)
True Colors Bookstore (Minneapolis, MN)
Our list of places to find Sinister Wisdom is growing! Join the Sinister Wisdom
Community Distribution Network and help spread the work of Sinister
Wisdom. More information is available at www.SinisterWisdom.org andon our Facebook page, http://www.facebook.com/SinisterWisdom.

Summer 2011 5

Digital Archive of Sinister Wisdom 1976-2000
Agreement with Reveal MediaAs you may know printed materials—books, magazines, journals,
et cetera—are quickly being digitized by a variety of institutions including
libraries and Google. To date, back issues of Sinister Wisdom have not been
available electronically to scholars, researchers, and students. While we
recognize that there are many issues with digitization, we also don't wantSinister Wisdom and its thirty-five years of lesbian imagination to be lost to
future readers. As a result, Sinister Wisdom has entered into an agreementwith Reveal Media to digitize back issues from 1976 through 2001.
This was not an easy decision. Reveal Media is not a womanowned or lesbian-owned company and is in fact a for profit entity.
Nevertheless, Reveal Media has an exciting project to digitize issues ofmagazines and journals from the Women’s Liberation Movement to makethem available to research libraries and scholars. We feel that Sinister
Wisdom is an important part of the collection and we are pleased to join anumber of other feminist and lesbian publications that are a part of the
project.
What most excites us about the project is that, as a part of theagreement, Sinister Wisdom will receive an electronic file of all issues ofSinister Wisdom digitized under the agreement. We plan to put these backissues online at our own website, (www.SinisterWisdom.org), to make themwidely available to readers. This will probably take a number of years(though secretly we are hoping that it might happen in time for our 40th
anniversary in 2016.) In the interim, Reveal Media will sell subscriptions tolibraries and other institutions of the full collection. When they reach aparticular threshold, they will also make the collection freely available.
An important part of Sinister Wisdom’s contract with Reveal Mediais that individual authors can opt out of having their work
available in the collection. If you wrote for Sinister Wisdom during theseyears and you do not want your contribution to be available in the archive,
please email Julie R. Enszer at JulieREnszer@gmail.com or write to her atSinister Wisdom, PO Box 3252, Berkeley, CA 94703. In your letter pleaseindicate that you are writing to “opt out” of the digitization project andclearly list the articles you wrote and your name. Your material will be
suppressed from the digitization project. Your timely response to this is
greatly appreciated.
In the meantime, we will keep you up to date on the project andlet you know how it develops.

6 Sinister Wisdom 83 – Identity and Desire

Red Prayer for a Nun
Samn Stockwell
Why trade one embargo of the soul for another,as if we were not both a paste of dreams
over a shard of will?
Remember the full lips and unclothedbreasts of young women, the sun setting through cigarette smoke,wine drunk late, the day ending
before memory battles hope?
—The only triumph.

Summer 2011 7

First Confession
Samn Stockwell
Stephen ground my face in the snow bankand ran to his mother’s house.
Martin smelled like cow shit
and held my hand in third grade.
My best friend held a velvet postcardof the Virgin Mary that glowed in the dark.
I loved her and wanted to marry her,though she committed mortal sins.
We wanted God to keep us foreverriding our bikes over the iron bridge,
waving to our distant parents.

8 Sinister Wisdom 83 – Identity and Desire

The Balkans
Samn Stockwell1.
My mother pounded on the back of my older sisterpushing her down the front steps - you just go and threw her mascara after her,my sister waiting until evening
when my father brought her back in the house.
My mother curled into the couch.
The doctor told me to rest.
Then work, foodand the brown couch
we slept onin the vastness of the living room
vanished.
We were divided by my younger sister’s birth;
my brother to the air force.
In the next place we lived
she tied the baby to a chair
and threw her,once, against the wall.
I can’t remember what?
A medical procedure
my mother performedon my younger sister I remember my sister screaming.
It makes my shoulders roil even now.
Sometimes at night I think I hear someone crying
but it’s the glue of everyday life the dog snoring, the refrigerator churning.
My younger sister lived at home until she was thirty,
sidling between adolescence and old age.
She and my mother watched TV and dozed andSummer 2011 9

sickened, sharing a vaporizer and diagnoses.
My mother grew thin, my sister fat, and my father circled outside them,raging—I’ve given them everything.
2.
It could be events, like place,are a side effect of time—
When he was seventeen and
I was seven, my brotheroffered me twenty dollars
to touch my crotch.
He pleaded,
hand under his suit pants.
When I was younger
he said mom said to do thisand time left him forever seventeen.
3.
Wearing a flannel nightgown,
my older sister tripped over a cord.
My father ripped the cord out,
beating channels through her gown.
My mother said
look what you’ve done
but she was smiling
nervously, rage was not a consolation.
Guilt ate every one of us.

10 Sinister Wisdom 83 – Identity and Desire

January Dreams
Samn Stockwell
I was walking a snowstorm down,
I could hardly raise my feet
and when I got home,
it was still Christmas,
gifts from my aunt
under an exhausted tree,
my family waiting for the ceremony.
Next, I drank a vat of gravylike coffee
in a coffee bar. The anorexic girldrank water, and I kissed her, dripping
calories on her lips. Where was Bethto witness? I wanted Ellen and a paradeof my showy past to stalk away from.
Was Christmas over?
Had I gotten a present for my aunt?
I am getting in the car with Bethwhen the handicapped actor’s workshop ends.
They hop past: the walking heads
with necks glued to black shingles.
Beth drags me to the lesbian sewing circle,
where her lover is fixing the drape on a grayflannel cape. I am fitted with red boxing shorts,
I will be attacking the cold. Beth is singing opera.

Summer 2011 11

simple truths
Elana Dykewomon

1.
the world gets cleaner
because women clean italways been that way
simplebut we were no matchfor internal combustion
strip mines
our rags and bleachcouldn’t reach those corners
hell, we said
we’re tired of this messyou do it
but no one did
2.
guns must be delicious
little boys lick themold men rub their barrels and sighmeat potatoes gravy
thanksgiving
property borders everything tasty
don’t be a spoil sport
it’s a party
pin the tail on the target
smack your lips3.
some women like a tickle

12 Sinister Wisdom 83 – Identity and Desire

4.
what makes it change
not kindness
what lesson is that
we thought kindness wastrue spiritual practiceshows how much we know
5.
that reminds meof being 16, 17 achingto gentle
a womanany woman must get it
if another one asks
can I be gentle with you
this was before I ever heardof sm of give it to me hardo for a chance
to run my handslow
now
I take it for granted
any day any night
I can touch womenwith love
I don’t forget to, exactlybut
I could be gentle
more
would that change anything
besides meSummer 2011 13

6.
the power went off
I lit the menorah for the last nighteven though Susan and Michal had gone to bed
because let there be lightand here was lightand I lay on the couch next to the menorah
and played solitaire on my cell phone7.
could I tell you a story
not tonight9.
let’s skip 8evenhanded, practical – let us
you and me float
suspended in the salted tanklooking inward for a chancethat dreams
don’t come truein the cave I have seen the minotaurand death of coursein the cavern the others avoid
in the morning I dreamed I heard my brother’s voiceon the answering machine
they were nice to her in the hospital this one guy
brought her potato chips but
mom is no morehe rambled and I choked on the dream screamno no not loud enough for Susan
exercising in the living room
twenty steps away to hear no14 Sinister Wisdom 83 – Identity and Desire

grief will comebut not today
the second of january
10.
I am fragile as old celluloid
full of important images but too
flammable to take out of the vault

Summer 2011 15

Believing
Elaine Sexton
We all watched, silent,rolling up our windows.
From the back seat
Lucy said: Just because
you’ve made your bed,
doesn’t mean you have tolie in it. We all turned to lookbecause seeing is believing.
Just then, the cliff you hoped forappeared – a winter sea
crashing and bashingits stone face, now your own.

16 Sinister Wisdom 83 – Identity and Desire

Glass House
Elaine Sexton
The night reflected her own interior
design: glossy, modern. This time
she made sure to use tempered glass,inside and out, so the trees entered
everywhere, the couch she napped on
nestled in open branches as did
the lampshade, a lit robin’s nest.
The goblet she held suspended in air.
The sun rose and set drenching pine
floors that glowed noon to night,
never a dark moment until it turned
truly dark. Lucy busied herself in a book,trying not to look out to see her legs
stretching, her elbow propped, then dropped.
If she did look, she could see her namein reverse type, her hair needed brushing.
She would see you staring back, amazedthat she could ever feel safe socompletely transparent, the anomaly
of “safety glass,” how it promises
to be harmless when it breaks.

Summer 2011 17

Rectrix (REK-triks)
Elaine Sexton
Picturing language without gender
over supper, someone said imagine
a day without pronouns, his/hers. What to dowith rectrix / from the Latin / feminineof rector / one that directs /(she) who directs / as well as:
the quill feathers of a bird’s tailcontrolling the direction of flight.
Imagine text without italics. No map
to the emphatic. Here’s the smallest
lens on earth / to consider control /all that can not be said / in print.

18 Sinister Wisdom 83 – Identity and Desire*drive*Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz
But the scary, the strange part is, I'm driving my new girlfriend's truck 65
miles an hour in fairly dense traffic and I begin. First knuckle against
crotch through my green army cutoffs. Then my whole palm pressing up
and down, heat rising, blood rising, rubbing in hot broad circles, flame,
blood, sun so high, body roars ready to come when it hits me. What I'mdoing. Masturbating on the freeway.
I panic. Lose it. It. The erection, I want to say, juggling male imagery
against my meager knowledge of physiology, clitoral pride, tall andswollen. Lose it to fear, is this dangerous? Am I crazy? Who do I ask?
Three lovers back was the one who taught me to make her come while shedrove, and she drove just fine, but there were two of us--one to come andone to pay attention?
Meanwhile it's gone. Lost. It. And I want It.
So. Eyes on the road, the cars. With supreme caution I begin
again. Lightly. Inside the shorts this time. Fingers on skin. Slickclit. Pounding broadening circle pounding flame blood flame
blood pounding if this is dangerous if I die for it I have to finishand do. Come wet. Keep driving. Flash on that famous male drive. Gotta
have it. Animals. Just yesterday I read how male dolphins bond to gangrape females, corner them with a frontal assault and a back-up team likevast slow football. Imagine telling my new girlfriend whose truck I'm
driving,
my new girlfriend with whom I made such wild liquid love in a hugeborrowed bed in the mountains of northern New Mexico that (gotta haveit) I followed her across the continent to a city where I know only three
women, none of them well. Where I sit every day trying to revise essays I
can barely remember reading much less writing. Where she works a job
she hates, comes home burned and defeated, empty. Vacuums the stairs,
bleaches the sheets.
Flash on the seat of her truck, vinyl with a stretchy seat cover, clean andtidy, like everything my girlfriend owns and is. Tonight when I get home
I'll mention something about how she is sometimes rigid and she'll freeze
with rage. For days. Then I'll try to pretend I didn't mean it. But I do.

Summer 2011 19

Flash on the seat of her truck where I just came wet. Wonder if the smell
will drift out the window, or vanish beneath sweet amber diffusing inafternoon sun from the tiny wooden box she keeps in the ashtray.
Or if maybe a whiff will remain. If she'll recognize it and find it sexy. The
sun hits right above my eyes, I drive steady in the line of traffic, cross thebridge into my new, alien city, and I know this last, that she'll find it sexy,is what I want.

20 Sinister Wisdom 83 – Identity and Desire

Photograph 1
Azaan Kamau

Summer 2011 21

Photograph 2
Azaan Kamau

22 Sinister Wisdom 83 – Identity and Desire

The Night I Met Bill Casey
Merry Gangemi
The drive to Locust Valley was interminable; eighty-percent
humidity, a yellow-green haze over the Long Island Expressway, and myalmost-father-in-law, Edmund, behind the wheel, bleating his horn like therest of the stalled herd. Edmund was a diminutive man, but he was
nobody’s fool. After the war and his stint as an OSS interrogator, Edmund
taught high school French. He was a Goldwater conservative who
eventually assumed and held onto control of the Hudson County GOP for
more than twenty years.
Edmund was a widower and a teetotaler, the latter a crusade. He
only drove Chevrolets, and never exceeded the speed limit. When I began
to date his son, Nathaniel, he was delighted, but soon his displeasure wasevident. After all, I was a registered Democrat, a nascent feminist, anddefinitely not WASP. Anyway, there we were, creeping towards Locust
Valley while WNEW fm purred through the radio and planes from JFK
screamed overhead.
I was invited by Edmund’s friend Sofía to spend a month at her
summer home in Locust Valley, a tony enclave not far from Teddy
Roosevelt’s Oyster Bay home. I was twenty-years-old, engaged, andalready treading water in a role that was devolving into something
inexplicably disturbing. Regardless of the affection I felt towards
Nathaniel, who was eight years my senior, I carried uneasiness in my chest,
a sense that something wasn’t quite right. No matter how wonderful
Nathaniel was, he was also ambitious and privileged. When there wastension between us, I attributed it to his occasional bouts of impatience
with circumstances rather than temperament. Nathaniel had swept me off
my feet into a circle that I found both exciting and intimidating. Needlessto say, I was thrilled by the invitation: four weeks at Rock Hollow Farm.
Sofía Ocampo was an elegant Argentine Parisian, married somethirty years to one Frederick Rodier, whose family fortune was built on thebacks of South Africa’s diamond miners. Rodier had known Edmund sinceWorld War II and the Office of Strategic Services (OSS). Fred, as Edmund
referred to him, had cast Sofía aside and taken up with one Olga
Baraczak, an expatriate Polish lawyer who was the same age as
Nathanial. Sofía refused to give Frederick a divorce, carrying on as if
Fred’s affair was mere annoyance, which, according to Edmund, it was.
Sofía could care less about pretense. Everyone knew what Olga and Fred
were up to, and, quite frankly, Olga and Fred did not faze me; I was
intrigued by what Sofía and Edmund meant to each other. I did notSummer 2011 23

understand why I had been invited but the chance to get out of the city
and write, felt like an adventure I didn’t want to miss.
“So why do you think she invited me?” I asked Nathaniel the night
before I left.
“Because she likes you,” he answered.
“She hardly knows me,” I said. Through the phone, I could feel
Nathaniel’s pause. Then he sighed. “Don’t read anything into it,” hefinally said. “She likes you. She’s bored. Leave it at that.”
Five hours after leaving New Jersey, we drove through the gates of
Sofía’s farm. At the end of a long gravel driveway, we pulled up to thehouse. This so-called summer cottage was next door to the Doubledays(who were not in residence, I learned). It was a large, rambling, cedarshaked house with a four-car garage, groundskeeper’s cottage, greenhouse,guesthouse, and a large, secluded, in-ground swimming pool—but moreon that later. Sofía was conferring with her groundskeeper, Jake Bird.
Edmund beeped the horn and Sofía and Jake turned around.
At this point in my story, I suppose I should write: A beautiful
smile bloomed across Sofía’s face, but that would sound ridiculous andbetray my naiveté and awkwardness. As it was, I had a very hard time
meeting people I did not know, let alone understand how her smile really
did bloom across her face.
“I wonder if calling the police is necessary!” she exclaimed, movingaround the car to greet us.
I scrambled out of the car. “Hello,” I said.
Sofía bestowed two light kisses, one on either cheek. “So ourbudding poet has arrived!” she exclaimed. “Welcome to the farm, Helen.”
She turned to Edmund. “You are late as usual,” she said.
Edmund grinned. “Police? For what?” he asked.
“Some punks tore up one of the flower beds along the east end of
the property,” Jake Bird said.
“Completely destroyed the angelica,” Sofía added.
“What is angelica?” I asked.
“The guardian of the garden,” Sofía proclaimed. “But for now
let’s get you both settled.”
As if on cue, the housekeeper appeared.
“Bring Helen’s bags to the Green Room,” Sofía told thehousekeeper. “Edmund, you are in the Carriage House.”
Sofía Ocampo had the voice of Capucine and the physiognomy ofLauren Bacall. I looked and sounded more like Annie Hall with short hair,and tended towards baggy chinos and over-sized oxford shirts—a fashion
failing for a young woman that was hardly appreciated by Republicans
circa 1974—but I was interested in everything, which gave me certain
latitude I took full advantage of.

24 Sinister Wisdom 83 – Identity and Desire

I dutifully followed the housekeeper. “What is your name?” I asked
her.
“Perla,” she said. “Perla Müller.”“I like that,” I told her as she led me upstairs to my room.
“Spanish and German?”“No,” she said, “Brazilian and German.” She put my suitcase on astand at the foot of the bed. “Let me know if you need anything,” she said,
and left, quietly closing the door behind her.
I stood there for a moment, looking at the closed door, a nebulous
sense of discomfort hanging in the air. What ruins are in me that can befound, I thought, remembering my Shakespeare. I was still standing there
when Sofía knocked.
“Come in,” I called, and she opened the door.
“So,” she said. “I hope you like this room. This was my room until
I was married.” She walked over to the windows and began adjusting thecurtains“Is that how long you’ve been here?” I asked.
“Much longer,” she said, and opened one of the dormer windows.
“My grandfather built this house over eighty years ago. It has always been
my favorite place to be.”“Mine is the ocean,” I said.
Sofía opened another window, tied back the curtain, and turned tome. Her marvelous smile bloomed again.
“Then,” she said. “We have many things in common.”Sofía looked around the room again and then turned to me. “Youmust be exhausted,” she said. “Dinner is at eight, nothing formal.”
I looked at my watch. It was 3:30. “Thank you,” I said. “I’m tired
enough to take a nap.”“Good,” Sofía replied. “Sleep well.” Like Perla, she closed thedoor very quietly.
Later that evening, we sat down to a casual supper in the screenedin rear porch. Edmund, awash with references to Solzhenitsyn, dominatedthe conversation for most of the meal, dragging his reductive-government
ideology along with him to the veranda, where we had coffee and lemon
poppy-seed cake. Eventually, Edmund finished his analysis of post-Nixon
America and turned his attention to Ronald Reagan, who he believed
would be the most impressive president the country had ever seen.
“More impressive than FDR?” I asked.
Edmund stirred his coffee. “Roosevelt was a Democrat,” he said.
“Well, I know that,” I replied, “but he did lead us out of the Great
Depression.”“He was a socialist,” Edmund said, “a traitor to his class.”

Summer 2011 25

I pulled a face, which made Sofía laugh.
“The renegade of the Roosevelts,” she quipped “Speaking of
which, Edmund, why don’t we go to Oyster Bay tomorrow? Teddy’ssummer cottage is an interesting day trip.”“Well,” Edmund said irritably. “You know I’ll be leaving after
lunch.”
Sofía turned towards me. “Yes,” she said. “Helen is an idealist,
Edmund.”“Right,” he said, “my only daughter-in-law—a bright-eyed
idealist.”
I was surprised at how his words stung. My eyes filled.
“Tell us about Nixon,” Sofía said, changing the subject and giving
me a sympathetic wink.
“He’s coming back strong,” Edmund said.
They should have impeached the bastard, I thought.
“Everybody wants to see him,” Edmund droned. “He’ll be backsooner than we thought.”
Sofía listened and engaged Edmund in what he thought would
help ascend Reagan from governor to president. I struggled to stifle myyawns and to revive my dwindling attention span.
“Go to bed,” Sofía said soon after midnight.
I excused myself and went upstairs.
~~
The next morning, I woke to the sound of Jake Bird raking thegravel. He was rhythmic as he worked, his measured strokes punctuated by
the achingly lonely call of a morning dove. I closed my eyes and stretched,arms up over my head, back arching like a cat. I imagined Jake asmethodical and cautious, unlike the reticent, solitary gardener at my
grandfather’s summerhouse, who insisted on planting geraniums when mygrandmother wanted roses, and grew cabbages and carrots instead oftomatoes and green beans. I once heard my grandfather tell his canasta
partner that Mr. Plutterman had been gardener to the ex-king of
Romania—which annoyed my grandmother no end and only fueled hercontempt for him. The last straw for her was when he caught two rabbits
and hung their gutted corpses, heads down, on the clothesline.
I lay there remembering and thinking about all these things, andthen wondered why I agreed to marry Nathaniel. His father wasconservative and I was a socialist. How was I to deal with a father-in-law
like Edmund? He fancied himself an intellectual. He disparaged anyone
who did not agree with him about the evils of communism and thenecessity of controlling bleeding-heart liberals and dangerous student

26 Sinister Wisdom 83 – Identity and Desireradicals, who, he would complain, had no idea what they were protesting
against or demonstrating for. They were cowards, he would say. They’dhand us over to the Reds. Nathaniel would roll his eyes and say nothing
and I would be relieved that I was an earnest, if idealistic, lefty-commiepinko.
I looked over at the alarm clock. It was 7:15 and already humid. I
couldn’t bear to sit through breakfast with Edmund, so I decided a cup ofcoffee and a good run was a better option. Sofía was in the breakfast roomwith Edmund, who was reading the Wall Street Journal. I picked up the
New York Times and scanned the headlines. Edmund grunted goodmorning.
“How did you sleep?” Sofía asked me.
I smiled. “Like a rock.”
She laughed. “I always thought that was a funny phrase,” she said,
and I agreed.
“I’m going for a run,” I told her.
“There’s a lovely path,” she said. “Go right at the end of thedriveway. It’s not far past the box hedge.”
The path was well maintained, clear of rocks and branches, andcarpeted with pine needles and mottled leaves. I ran easily, in spite of theheat, for a good half-hour, and then turned back. I saw Sofía when I
approached the box hedge.
I slowed down and then stopped. “Hello,” I said.
“Did you enjoy your run?” She asked me.
“Very much,” I answered. “It was perfect!”“I thought you would,” she said. “Edmund is getting ready toleave. He wants to avoid any midday traffic.”
My relief was palpable. “That’s too bad.” I said.
Sofía laughed. “You are a terrible liar.”
I blushed, even though my face was already hot and red fromrunning.
“Ah!” she exclaimed, “You know when you’re impolite.”“Am I that transparent?” I asked her.
She laughed again. “Completely!”“Damn!” I exclaimed, and then said, “I’m going to be a terrible
daughter-in-law, Sofía.”“Nonsense,” she said. “You will figure it all out.”
I stood there, not sure of myself and suddenly startled by a feeling I
could not name.
Sofía took my arm, and we walked back to the house without
another word between us.

Summer 2011 27

Nathaniel called late that morning. Sofía was out running errands
and I was reading in the hammock on the far side of the back lawn. His
voice on the answering machine sounded tired and strained. He was sorry
we weren’t at home and he missed me. I deleted the message and frowned.
“Does he miss you?” Sofía asked, later.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Nathaniel always tells me he misses me,
but actually, I never miss him.”“Interesting,” Sofía said. “I must admit to the same. My husband
was always traveling and I was too busy with the boys to even think about
missing him.”
I picked a sliced cucumber out of the salad she was making. She
gently smacked my hand. We both laughed. After lunch we went for awalk and then we went down the pool. Sofía went directly to the deep end.
“Do you miss Paris?” I asked her.
She looked at me. “At times,” she said. “But I miss Barcelona far
more than Paris.”“Gertrude Stein loved everything Spanish,” I said. “But she also
liked Franco.”
I don’t know if she heard me. She dove in, releasing a spray ofwhiteness and rainbows into the humid air. I watched her from the chaise.
She is so beautiful, I thought. I closed my book and watched her swim
from one end of the pool to the other. A stream of words began to run
through me: aqueous, aquiline, alchemy, amazement. She is, I thought,
amazing. I put down my book and dove in. We swam laps, sometimes side
by side, sometimes fast and sometimes slow; I stopped counting at twentyfive, and let another stream of words move through my mind: cantilate,curious, copious, conjure, comforting; but then I lost my timing,
miscalculated my turn, and hit my forehead on the pool wall. I shot up outof the water. Sofía was gone.
Late that night, a parade of ferocious thunderstorms moved
through, clearing out all the humidity. The rest of my stay there was all
gorgeous weather and hour upon hour of reading and writing. Only a few
rainy days kept me inside. I ran every morning and I spent long sweethours reading in the hammock. When Nathaniel called, I felt disengaged
from him, distracted, and evasive. I found out later that he was furious
about those phone calls. But I didn’t care at the time and I didn’t carelater. The physical space I was in, the distance from home, and theimmediacy of Sofía and the days there, were all that mattered. Only those
few rainy days and the newspapers reminded me that the world was still
not perfect.
The Saturday before I was to go home, Sofía hosted Bill Casey
and his wife for dinner. Bill Casey was a legend to Edmund and his circle.
Sofía and Frederick had known him since before the war. Casey would

28 Sinister Wisdom 83 – Identity and Desire

soon be Reagan’s choice to head the CIA, but at the time I didn’t fully
understand his significance or his power. I was excited at the thought ofmeeting him. Sofía was very clear that casual was not on the menu. She
lent me a string of pearls and matching earrings to emphasize that fact. I
was in my room when I heard the flurry of their arrival. And not longafterwards, Sofía knocked on my door.
“It’s too bad Edmund isn’t here,” she said. “He adores Bill.”“Were they both in France?”“No,” Sofía said. “Bill and Edmund were OSS, Edmund in
Washington and Bill in London.” She fastened the pearls around my neck.
Her fingers lingered and then her hands dropped gently to my shoulders.
The sensation was electric. I had to force myself to step away. Then the
moment passed, and we went downstairs together.
Bill Casey was very tall, and pale. He had a long unpleasant face.
His cheeks were flaccid and poxy, his handshake was limp and cool. His
wife was unassuming and very nice. After an hour or so, we went into thedining room. Sofía sat me on her right, across from Mrs. Casey. Bill Casey
took the seat at the opposite end of the table.
The dining room was cool and dark. Candles illuminated thetable. Several bottles of wine stood on the sideboard. From the kitchen, I
could hear Perla moving about. I began to feel small, and hyper-vigilant, as
if I was moving down a dimly lit hallway and could not find any doors.
Bill Casey argued or droned throughout the entire meal. He
seemed annoyed, a state of mind I was certain he was very familiar with.
In turn, Sofía was aggressive or vexed; she challenged Casey several times,
particularly about money and Reagan’s candidacy. Mrs. Casey said very
little but smiled at me a lot. Then, I thought of a question.
“Don’t you think Nixon was guilty?” I asked Mrs. Casey.
She looked at me. For a moment or two, no one said anything.
Then Bill Casey said, “What the Left has done to Nixon is despicable.
There has to be respect for what Richard
Nixon has done for this country. You’ll do well to think of that.”
Then what? I thought. But I said: “Don’t you think he went too
far?”
Casey looked sharply at Sofía and then at me. “No,” he said. “”Hedidn’t go far enough.”
Then Mrs. Casey said, “Tell us, Helen, are you enjoying
yourself?”“Yes,” I answered. “Very much.”
She asked me about running and what I had studied in college.
Sofía was quiet. Bill Casey sniffed and then speared some green beans. The
tension hovering over the table was intense and frightening. I started toSummer 2011 29

think of strings of words. Conflagration, I thought, chastisement,
scintillating, scorn. Sofía touched my arm, asking if I cared for anything
more, and the word, “sensuous” ran through me. Sensuous, sensational,
secretive, serious, shame, shattered, shimmering. I felt myself redden andtook a drink of wine from the glass in front of me. That last word had
made me blush: shimmering; not sensuous or shame, but shimmering. I
took another drink of wine.
What happened next, while we were waiting for coffee, wasextraordinary. Mrs. Casey stood up and excused herself, “to freshen up,”would I care to join her? I was immovable. I would not leave the table nomatter how intense Bill Casey’s anger hung in the air. Every nerve in me
began to vibrate. Sofía put her hand on my arm.
“Feeling all right?” she asked.
“Yes,” I said.
She nodded, and then directed herself to Casey, who was still
muttering on like a priest at High Mass mumbling incomprehensibly in
Latin. Then they really began to argue. Casey was louder andgesticulating. Sofía was angry. I looked from one to the other, wondering
why Mrs. Casey was taking so long. I saw how beautiful Sofia was, howfine the lines that coursed her forehead, her simple, elegant hairstyle, her
hands still smooth and unmarked, the way she meeting Bill Casey head-on,
her beautiful dress. She had forgotten me. She was someone else, someone
beyond the woman Bill Casey could not talk down. Then I felt fear; I
realized that I didn’t understand what they were saying even though attimes they were speaking English. They switched to French, to Spanish
and back to English, which was more incomprehensible than the French. It
felt as if their sentences had no structure; words had devolved into
scatterings and slivers of sounds: sharp, stinging; empty, specious; elusive,vacuous. I looked from one to the other in bewilderment: I could notunderstand what they were saying.
Then Sofía broke into a stream of fiery French. Casey stopped
talking. He was clearly enraged. Then he jerked his napkin from his lap
and threw it on the table, excused himself, and left the room. Sofía and I
sat there. We heard him call to his wife; Perla rushing to get his umbrella; arustling of hurried movement; the front door open, and the front door
close. Shortly afterwards, Perla came in with the coffee and quietly poured
us each a cup. She asked if I wanted dessert.
“No,” I said, “nothing for me.” When Perla disappeared back into
the kitchen, I turned to Sofía.
“Don’t concern yourself with Bill, darling,” she said. “He and I go
way back.” She sipped her coffee and then smiled that gorgeous, gracious
smile. “I think we should have a cordial,” she said. “Better yet, a brandy.”

30 Sinister Wisdom 83 – Identity and Desire

She got up and went through to the kitchen, returning a few
minutes later with snifters and a bottle of brandy. Perla came in to clear
the table.
“Perla,” Sofía said, “Everything was lovely and delicious. Thankyou. Don’t fuss too much about the kitchen and we won’t need anythingelse. Will you be here Tuesday?”“Yes,” Perla said. “I will see you Tuesday.” We could hear her
moving about the kitchen and then we heard her car pull down the gravel
drive.
Sofía and I sipped our brandy. We did not talk about dinner, orBill Casey, or republicans. We talked about the intangibles of characterand integrity, the innovation of the Phoenician alphabet, the genius ofHannah Arendt, and the perfidy of colonialism. But while the brandy
dulled my anxiety, my mind raced and my body struggled to keep up withit all. Eventually, I stopped trembling. The clock chimed midnight. We
said goodnight to each other and went upstairs.
I could not sleep. I lay there for hours, watching shadows thrown
so randomly on the ceiling by the moonlight. I recited poems and the lyricsof songs. I remembered the opening lines of Oedipus Rex, the words
Antigone hurled at Creon, Lorca’s luscious poem, Dos lunas de tarde. I
thought of Juliet’s passionate recognition of Romeo’s voice: My ears have notyet drunk a hundred words of thy tongue’s uttering, yet I know the sound. And then of
Dickinson, and Bishop: Dream dream confronting,/now the cupboard’s bare./The
cat’s gone a-hunting./The brook feels for the stair. At 3 am, I gave up. I took a
towel, quietly let myself out, and went down to the pool.
The air was much cooler that night, the surface of the poolsmothered by a mist that rose from the warmer water. I remembered
Faulkner and the first time I read the word “effluvium.” I slipped out of mypajamas and into the pool, careful not to make noise. I was careful not tosplash. I floated on my back and then swam breaststroke, languidly andquietly, back and forth. I tried to think of nothing but I thought ofNathaniel and Edmund. I heard what my name would sound like if I
married him: Helen Pflicht. It was flat; it had no life to it. It was a name I
could never get use to. I could not marry Nathaniel. Caught between
Nathaniel and his father, I would suffocate. I would never write anotherpoem. I would never see Sofía again. I felt that last thought like a sin,knowingly horribly honest. Standing by my bed/In gold sandals/ Dawn thatvery/moment awoke me. I knew of Sappho, and I knew of Rich, Pratt, andBroumas. I knew what it meant. I stopped at the shallow end of the pool,and I cried. It was grief and loneliness that fell into the water, because I
understood what had happened. I understood who I was. I couldn’t marrySummer 2011 31

Nathaniel or any other man. If I did, I would never write anything thatwas true again. I would become broken.
After a while, I rinsed my face in the water and turned to begin
another lap. Sofía was sitting there at the other end of the pool, watchingme. I didn’t breathe as she slipped into the pool and swam towards me, herstrokes strong.
I waited.

32 Sinister Wisdom 83 – Identity and Desire

After Almost Breaking Up
Erin Pamela Stewart
We stay together, take turns with apologies
and form our bodies back into spoons
I’m not ready to wake up without this warmth
It’s what you said, any love is a giftwhether we take a long walk through foreveror find ourselves sick of the other in six months
Once, across a sticky table at a local bar
I saw you take a silent breath and bare the truthof what your current girlfriend could not give you
I wanted then to take your hand
and tell you this sadness is what sometimes leads
our souls to salvation
We stay together. There is no other way
What’s ahead of us is too dark;
what’s behind, too far
There is only here: a warmth to heat
the moment, a spoon to hold it for a spell

Summer 2011 33

A Woman Known Here
Cheryl Moore
How did she keep writing,
And where are her poems?
Edna's comfort was in poetry.
She spoke her philosophy
In streams of varying lines—
How I loved
Her being so deep and humane.
We shared poetry in commonand discussed the acute necessityof survival.
I was so humbled
To meet a poet on E-4—
Edna wrote the gravity of her truth
In one of my journals.
I've now lost Edna and the journal,
But she inspired courage and compassion.
She restored me to companionshipIn the great few days
We were wounded friends
At Muhlenberg Hospital.

34 Sinister Wisdom 83 – Identity and Desire

The Queen of Spades
Liz Demi GreenThe easiest way to play the game of Hearts
is to lose every heart you gain.
But if you’re feeling reckless and a little bit shrewd
you turn the game on its head,
hold every heart instead
this is called shooting the moon.
But you will never reach these 26 points of grace
unless you also draw the Queen of Spades.
This is a game my Grandma taught me to play,
her tiny frame bearing down on the competition
like a bent safety pin, ready to burst.
You see, both Grandma and the Queen of Spades
blessed and cursed you in the same breath.
Kissed with contradiction:
The queen’s presence means 13 points
in a game where less is more.
Grandma’s wit, wisdom, and power
held inside the Mormon Church like a frozen flower
I told her I was abused.
She believed my story but not my truth.
It was my father.
Her heart melted halfway through.
So Dorothy died with silence between us.
Yet she still visits me in that space
between dreams and awake—
Sometimes I can see her laugh.
She looks at her hand,
Does the mathHer eyes cackle and she tells me:
Elizabeth, I’m winning!
And you can do better than that.
Because you can’t win
with the Queen of Spades alone.
To shoot the moon, you have to go for broke:Summer 2011 35

Collect thirteen hearts stroke for strokeor else you’re a half-hearted sucker
swinging on ambition’s rope.
So I’m stuck here, with an even dozen
plus the 13 curses of one fateful woman.
I am trying to capture her chaos,make her magic mine and win
my father’s conscience and apology.
But with each passing turnI realize that’s a card I’ll never earn.
I’m stuck at 25 waiting for the King of Hearts
to pull the knife out of his headwaiting for the mercy of the living
to match the hands of the dead.
But I’m not going to wait much longer,
with each passing year I grow stronger.
If I let anyone fill that space,
their neck would surely breakfrom the weight.
Who could take such a task but a god?
I cannot wait any longer for a savior.
My Dad will never be that man
I cannot hold stiff and lonely
Hoping lovers or Christ could make this fair.
These words are my magic
So I say:…kin.g…me.
There can be no substitutions but this.
Everyone has their role to play:
A Jack is a JackA Queen does her own thing
I was dealt a heartless King.
There is nothing else to achieve
then to become what I need.
I cannot ask for a cleaner hand.
Thirteen strokes of misfortune are the sameas one kiss from a medicined spoon.

36 Sinister Wisdom 83 – Identity and Desire

The Queen of Spades tattoos me a kissa twisted whisper behind my ear.
She shakes my ribcage
She says:
You can’t do this alone.
Move gently towards
other people’s hearts.
This is how you will learn
to shoot the moon.

Summer 2011 37

Whistling, Waiting
Jessica Mason McFadden
Painful reminders acrossthe second line of her wrist
tell us she is human, too.
We are alike: my sway,her broad shoulders,
the way you’re dancing today,
our desire for an easier life.
Yet I judge us. Some flustered coldness
between us makes me hope
the wrinkled whiter linesthat bubble up overyour pale skin make you mine,and that perfection will be
the scar that we all wear
beneath curling knits.
Others are wrong
to say that soon you or your nontraditional student
will wreak of age or something else, unlike
my youth, my fuel:its call to be pumped into a relaxed lover
who lives off of me,
my medicinal saliva,
the freshening nipple,
the revolving door
to my womb.
However it might
have happened, there I was,whistling and wearing an apron
and the glow of a virginwhore
or a maiden-princess in waiting.
I open the top half of the cottage door
only to sympathetically see
her under the hood—
we are at a loss for words,
yet I eat the apple she offers me,
I show her to the corner.

38 Sinister Wisdom 83 – Identity and Desire

She follows me in
and I know by the heatfrom her groin on my backthat our exchange is equitable.
She knows babies comefrom me for her, to replenish her,skin and organs:she wants all of it.
I have her babies,
and the dwarves, think
I am the Blessed Virgin—
they do not listen
when I tell them
I ate the apple willingly;
the prince will not listen
when he finds melying in a glass casket,
passed out under her spellwith a protruding belly
and bloody lips.
No, she was not peddling
products in that basket,
nor am I a princess
who wants a prince to wake mewith his eunuch lips. I am a queen
who loves a crone
who brings me apples
in exchange for a romp
on a cot with my loving,life-giving cunt.

Summer 2011 39

The Dress
Ana Schwartz
The dress draped beautifully evenon the sateen hanger in her closet.
And while it hung on a cotton imposter,
the fabric was the real thing:
the finest rose-colored silk.
From time to time she would touch thecool, smooth material gently with
her two middle fingers, dreaming of
the event that would summon her
to wear it.
The dress had hung in the closet ten years.
Then one day she got the call, andshe circled the date on her calendar.
As the weeks passed, she mentally crossed
off the days on the calendar, passing the time byenvisioning herself in the dress, her skinaglow, her eyes alight.
Until the day finally arrived.
And when she put on the dress,
and felt it caress her skin, sheturned to the mirror.
And it was then, when she caught
her reflection in the mirror, she
was finallyhome.

40 Sinister Wisdom 83 – Identity and Desire

Park Slope Hookup
Ana Schwartz
She watched the tea twigs swirl
fast down to the deep of her mug.
The melodies of that night's jazz band rosehigher, floating up with the steam that billowed
off her freshly steeped tea.
Dare she take the first sip?
From the street shadows scurry in figures
accompanied by gusts that blast the billowing steam.
The newsprint from the freebie rag the shop promotes
has stained her fingertips, leaving charcoal streaks
on the coolly coloured cobalt mug.
No matter.
She rubs the spots into
oblivion. Then satisfied, she grasps the
mug handle gingerly between thumb andmiddle finger, and ventures the first sip.
And, just then, she emerges from the cold.
Glancing up at her in her long wool coat,she pauses mid-sip, mug suspended, eyes opening,
until, cymbals crashing, gusts blasting, steam simmering,she smiles her a wide,
welcoming smile.

Summer 2011 41

The Body and Significance: The Art of Linda Stein
Sandra Langer
Two things can get people to make efforts: if people want to get something, or if theywant to get rid of something. Only, in ordinary conditions, without knowledge,
people do not know what they can get rid of or what they can gain.
P. D. Ouspensky
French feminist theorists, Julia Krestiva, Helen Cixous, and Luce
Irigary, who create female language outside the “law of the fathers,”
influence the work of artist Linda Stein. Her art is feminist, though not
ideological. American-feminist critics, including myself, Arlene Raven,
Joanna Frueh, and British-feminists Griselda Pollock and Rozika Parker
were all instrumental in spreading these theories during the early stages of
the women’s movement in the arts.
From the first wave of activism in the 1970s through the 1980s,
women’s rights shaped the thinking of many young women nationally andinternationally. Secretary of State Hilary Clinton (the most admiredwoman in America according to Oprah), recently told Newsweek: “I believethat the rights of women and girls is the unfinished business of the 21st
century. We see women and girls across the world who are oppressed andviolated and demeaned and degraded and denied so much of what they
are entitled to as our fellow human beings." The right to be equal is central
to these debates and few artists champion it as forcefully as Linda Stein
does. Her rejection of biological determinism and explorations of gender
fluidities address sexism and the politics of representation at their roots. It
hardly needs pointing out that two major issues—the objective occasion of
the female body in art, and the marginalization of women artists—are themost important concerns for feminist theory and practice over the last
thirty years and now. Indisputably, individual artists negotiate etiologies offemininity in different ways. The ways in which women, art, andfemininity are utilized remains a challenge for all artists—not just feminists.
Along with the work of Magdalena Abakanowicz and Eva Hesse, Linda
Stein's work pushes these limits.
Central to these debates is the concept of gender identity, originally a
medical term used to explain sex-reassignment surgery to the public.
Gender, as psychologists describe it, is a core gender identity.1 However, as
contemporary scientists are discovering, many factors play a part in genderand identity. Biological factors that influence gender identity include preand post-natal hormone levels and gene regulation. Social factors also play
1 The right to be equal is central to these debates and few—artists champion it as forcefully as Linda
Stein does.

42 Sinister Wisdom 83 – Identity and Desirea part and include gender messages conveyed by family, mass media, andother institutions.
Certainly, one of the most influential views is social learning theory,
which encourages children to develop their gender identity throughobserving and imitating gender-linked behaviors, and then reward or
punish them accordingly. Additionally, a person's gender identity may be
inconsistent with their biological sex characteristics, a consequence of
which has individuals dressing and/or behaving in ways that are perceived
by others as being outside cultural gender norms; these gender expressions
may be described as gender variant or transgender. Stein’s art explores
how to combine male and female traits into one form, resulting in figuresthat may end up looking more masculine or feminine or androgynous.
After September 11, 2001, Stein (who lives and works near
Ground Zero) felt the need to create art that evoked the power to protect
and defend people. The result is a series of armored Knights that, to myself
and other art historians, show the influences of classical Greek and Roman
torsos—though Stein says she is not consciously aware of it. Even so, theimages that quickly come to mind include the ancient Greek statue Venus deMilo, the Hellenic stature, Belvedere torso, and Michelangelo’s muscular,
female Cumaean Sibyl, one of the five sibyls in the Vatican’s Sistine Chapel.
[Fig 1. Knight of Tomorrow 132” x 18” x 16”, mixed media, 2005)]
In this post-9/11 work, Stein celebrates national heroes andfundamental American values, simultaneously redefining what bravery is
and what constitutes a hero. Employing contemporary pop culture, Steinrefuses to confine women to the domestic sphere. Her female bodies do notknow their place and refuse to remain imprisoned in stereotypes created
for them in male dominated society. Rather, they serve to educate, elevate,
and disturb fundamental notions pertaining to the female body andgendered spaces.
Stein’s transformational sculpture has a long-establishedrelationship to the body in both public and private space. Since theinception of Western art, patriarchal art historians identify the great
sculptors as men—Michelangelo, Bernini, and Rodin. In sculpture, theonly advantage men once had over women was their physical strength.
Consequently, the practice of sculpture has been intimately interwoven
with the myth of machismo and the idea that these were heroic men
engaged in physically demanding work. As a female sculptor, Linda Steinis a contradiction in terms. In this sense, Stein is the natural inheritor ofwhat Henry James dubbed the "white Marmorean flock,” which was agroup of independent American women sculptors working in Rome that
included Harriet Hosmer.

Summer 2011 43

Hosmer, the American lesbian-feminist sculptor who neither
married nor desired to be a good wife, chose to be a good artist. Recently,
Hosmer proudly declared: “I honor every woman who has strength
enough to step out of the beaten path when she feels that her walk lies inanother, strength enough to stand up and be laughed at, if necessary." 2
Nonetheless, Hosmer still found her work disparaged through genderstereotyping. The same is true of African-/Native-American sculptor,
Edmonia Lewis and the other women who were part of this group.
Hosmer and her sister artists were accused by envious male
sculptors of not doing their own carving, a ludicrous accusation as thesemen did not do their own carving. It was common practice, during the
mid-nineteenth century, for Italian stonemasons to do the heavy work.
Hiram Powers, sculptor of the famous Greek Slave, regularly hired Italian
carvers to do his work, generally adding the fine details himself. Hosmer,
who was also a businesswoman, sued and won in court, which put a stop tothese vicious rumors. The old idea that women are not fit to be sculptors isnonsense.
Following the trail blazed by these role models, women artists—
including Dame Barbara Hepworth, Käthe Kollwitz, Elizabeth Frink,
Germaine Richier, Louise Nevelson, Eva Hesse, and most recently Louise
Bourgeois—have made the use of fabricators a non-issue.
In the 1970s, a feminist politics of the body emerged that was toinspire a number of women artists. The theorist Lisa Tickner referred tothe body as occupied territory, and called upon women artists to reclaim
their bodies from appropriation by male fantasies and desires.3 The
reemergence of the archetype of the Great Goddess in contemporary
women’s art attempted to create, what culture critic Gloria Feman
Orenstein called, a new feminist myth.4 Among ancient people, psychicenergy was thought to reside in matter and to contain the divine. The
goddess was a symbol of transformation that activates these forces within
woman that are identified with holiness and creative power.5
Stein, a strong eco-feminist enjoys a close connection with nature,so naturally her work embodies past psychic states that she symbolizes byusing wood, stone, shell, bone and other items drawn from nature as in her
Shaman (2006). Commenting on her process, Stein says she is “usually
2 Hosmer, Harriet, quoted in A. Garrihy and P. G. Nun, ‘Women, Sculpture and Heroism in the 19th

Century’ FAN (1985) vol. 2, no 2.
3 Tickner, L. “The Body Politic: female sexuality and women artists since 1970” in Framing Feminism,
266, 272.
4 See Gloria Feman Orenstein. “The Reemergence of the Archetype of the Great Goddess” in the Art

of Contemporary Women. In Feminist Art Criticism: An Anthology. Eds. Arlene Raven, Cassandra Langer andJoanna Frueh. Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1988, 71–86.
5 Ibid 71.

44 Sinister Wisdom 83 – Identity and Desiredrawn to a found object… a piece of driftwood, for example, becomes thehorizontal cross bar between the shoulders…. A wooden bowl may
become a breast; an amalgam of metals may form a pelvic area.” Shecontinues, “they represent traces of civilization and are marked byhumanity. I see myself as rescuing and raising these discarded objects to ahigher status and giving them new meaning.”6
Stein’s representations, videos, and writings—like those of Mary
Beth Edelson, Carolee Schneemann, Nancy Spero, Judy Chicago, Bettye
Saar, Nancy Grossman, and Ana Mendieta—challenge society’s models ofwhat being female entails. Stein’s women are not prim, proper, prissy,
capricious, flirty, seductive, or any other stereotypic version of
womanhood. They serve to educate, elevate, and disturb fundamental
notions pertaining to the female body and gendered spaces In fact, hercreations are the quintessence of American womanhood, full of fighting
spirit and constantly in the process of reinventing itself. Thus, while her art
is international and global, Stein frequently uses an American comic bookicon, Wonder Woman to embody female empowerment. She also
incorporates Buddhist imagery and makes a point of focusing on thepeacemakers. [Fig. 2, Black Guard]. Her heroes restrain and contain violent
impulses in themselves and others.
Stein’s art is as transgressive as her messages about the fluidity ofgender that has galvanized debates about public sculpture and wearable
art’s place in society and culture wherever she has exhibited them. In thisway, she demonstrates the complex and critical stance summed up in
Claus Oldenburg’s statement that art should “do something other than sit
on its ass in a museum.” In a world that is often insane and blood thirsty,
Stein’s anti-war work dares to break boundaries in its radical demand for a
return to sanity and rational non-violent solutions to the complex realities
we confront in the 21st century.
In the last few years, Stein’s work has used the comic book
character Wonder Woman (created in the 1941) as a potent symbol for her
ideal of justice through non-violence. Wonder Woman’s creator, William
Moulton Marston, drew upon Greek mythology to endow his Amazon
princess with Athena’s wisdom, Aphrodite’s beauty, Hermes’s fleetness,and Heracles’s strength. Wonder Woman leaves Paradise Island armed
with her bullet deflecting bracelets, invisible telekinetic plane, and golden
lasso of obedience (later the lasso of truth) to bring peace and justice to theworld.
Stein, a life-long pacifist, continues her mission of breaking down
stereotypes of gender and sexuality through her series of guardian figures
6 Interview with the artist in her studio in New York. April, 2011.

Summer 2011 45

and protectors. Her androgynous figures are layered in found objects—
metal, leather, and lace. [Fig. 3 “Two WW Sculptures on Coatrack” and“If Room the Wall WW Sculpture W/WW Shadow”]
Photographs of Stein’s exhibitions and projects are related to the“happenings” that Allan Kaprow, a pioneer of performance art, staged
during the 1960s.7 Stein’s interactive and participatory bodysuits
transform gender, allowing women to feel their own authority. Stein
excitedly recalls a young woman from the Deep South who, after wearing
one of her sculptures, said, “it made me feel like I could tell my boyfriend I
didn’t want to have sex without a condom.” Similarly, when a young man
put on a large Wonder Woman-layered figure he seemed to take wings
flying across the room engaging both male and female partners in a danceof dynamic gender fluidity.
The arrangements of her figures, videos, and wearable objects invarious exhibitions and spaces, reflect a formal irregularity in shapes andsurfaces as well as distribution and display of individual objects. Her bodies
are covered with found objects—metals, recycled leather handbags,
zippers, and fabrics. Clad in shining armor, punctuated, encrusted,
pockmarked with tactile protrusions and sewn together. Multiple layers
accentuate their mottled collaged surfaces.
Reiterating Foucault’s notion of the body as a surface or map forsocial inscription, the artist establishes the body as her work’s literal andmetaphorical ground. Graphic scripts imbedded upon their torsos become
indelible fingerprints marking them as beings troubling to the existingorder. Stein’s work destabilizes and deconstructs how gender identities are
reinforced in a society terrified of difference while simultaneously
underscoring the complexities of multiple and fluid identities. Her art
creates bisexual objects merging male and female forms, cosmetic andmilitary symbolism, to critique and further complicate conventional gendercodes.
Stein’s appropriations and incorporations of historicizingclassicism, pop culture, and high fashion are remarkable. Her body suits
and wearable art are fashion statements rivaling the savage beauty offashion designer Alexander McQueen’s flaming creatures., which areaudacious, flamboyant, brutal, sexy, satiric, and transcendental.
McQueen’s garments are armor for the vulnerable human body. In asimilar but more serious and political vein, Stein’s razzle-dazzle draws
spectators to her art apparel.
The visual glamor of her latest series of Knights (2009–2011) isirresistible. The truncated figures wear skin-tight leather breastplates that
7 Kaprow, Allan. Assemblage, Environments & Happenings. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1966.

46 Sinister Wisdom 83 – Identity and Desire

resemble Batman’s costume in film Dark Knight. The musculature recalls the
garb of gladiators with their massive leather- covered pectorals and thicklypadded thighs. The leather cuirass echo Greco-Roman sculpture and bringviewers full circle to the likes of Spartacus who fought the tyrannicalregime of ancient Rome.
As many scholars have noted, it is impossible to understate thepsychological and subjective effects of discrimination on an oppressedpeople. This is especially true for GLBTQ people who, in today’s polarized
politics, are repeatedly scapegoated by hate- mongering politicians. In
relation to racism, political theorist Frantz Fanon sums it up, declaring thatthe colonizer projects distorted fears, desires, and fantasies onto the idea ofa Black body, and in a way that leads to the fragmentation of the Black
experience of self. The same comparisons can be applied to women andqueers as regards the distortions that this bigotry visits on concepts ofmasculinity and femininity. Moreover, like the colonized Black body, thebodies of women and queers are sexualized and eroticized by homophobic
patriarchal culture.
At the center of Linda Stein's work are radical reconstructions ofgender and identity, and of the fragmented female body. Stein’s focus on
the woman subject—as a signifier who, by her mere presence, enables newmeanings to exist—is revolutionary, and in shifting back to the subject
rather than the object, Stein forces us to raise questions about space andplace as well as gender and identity. Her creations have no fixedcategories.
In a more general sense, Linda Stein is a pioneer of cyborg
feminism. The figure of the cyborg is part of a new emerging discourse, a
new way to tackle patriarchy and its hierarchies. Stein does not suffer fromtechnophobia and uses these new technologies to produce a body of workthat transcends simple definition. Her bodies are feminized subjects but
feminized from a somewhat ironic vantage point. They recast women's
relationship to technology as refusing to imitate conventionalarrangements, approximations, and commercial displays that areassociated with “normative femininity.”
In such a system, the overall subjugation of women and thedomination of man is the standard model. Her refusal to conform togendered notions of division of labor is also one of the more exciting
visions of feminism to emerge to date. Using contemporary graphics fromcomic books and other media, she overrides simple categorizations of art

Summer 2011 47

and challenges the essentialism that has been visited on women since theinvention of the biblical Garden of Eden.
Her armored figures and wonder women are both cyborgs andgoddesses, manifestoes that rework the female body from the perspective ofher own artistic imagination. This is not the stuff of science fiction, butrather an emerging 21st-century feminism that makes perfect sense. It
breaks down the boundary between science, fiction, and social reality,
creating an optical experience that is heroic and incorporating women into
the formally macho pantheon of heroes and gods.
Stein gives female activities and actions agency. She confers uponthem values that insist on actively dismantling various binaries while at thesame time creating aesthetic objects of great beauty and richness. Her
sculptures glitter and glow like precious objects. They radiate beauty andpower with scarified leather surfaces as they oppose the man, machine,
and weapons systems of the postmodern military. [Fig. 4, Mascufem]. For
example, her heroes, such as Wonder Woman, never engage in preemptive
strikes or make anyone a military target. One may recall that Wonder
Woman only engages in combat in order to safeguard people’s autonomy
and freedom. She is completely free of the paranoid aggressivenessassociated with Hollywood representations of cyborgs in contemporary
action films. These are essentially what post-modern theorist Judith Butler
calls gender performances, in which the regulatory fiction of heterosexuality
constraints most of us to perform within the hegemonic norms that definedbipolar feminine and masculine norms in specifically societal contexts.
Unlike movie cyborgs, Stein’s highly visible entities can take on
big business, corporate America, corrupt politicians, neo-Nazis, skinheads
and a panoply of villains, cartoon heroes of old, and newly- minted graphic
comic heroes. The potential political purposes of her work, with repetitionsof certain iconographic elements—for example zippers that look likescars—heighten attention to the artist’s deeply held anti-war sentiments,
Frequently, Stein’s sculptures are inspired by objects found in nature, old
driftwood, branches, stones and leaves.
Another element in the importance of Stein’s work is its strong
commitment to changing how women's bodies are seen and experienced inour society. Unlike the majority of cyborg-tech nuts, Stein insists on thephysical manifestation of the female body in space because it is a physicalsignifier of gender and difference. In taking on the question that Faith
Wilding poses, regarding feminism's mutating to keep up with the shifting
complexities of social realities of life conditions, Stein engages in theradical work of inserting the visual presence, the physical manifestation of
the hybridized female body into the patriarchal discourse. By doing so, she
disrupts the male order, creating the possibility of a new (subjective andcultural) androgynous representation of the female body in both cyber

48 Sinister Wisdom 83 – Identity and Desire

space and public space. Stein’s work uncompromisingly confronts theinternet’s misogyny and challenges its inherent sexism right at theboundaries.
Creations such as Stein’s are not subject to a compulsory
heterosexuality and they defy the commodification of both female andmale bodies. As this essay suggests, cyber-feminism has many different
faces and will produce a new cluster of feminisms in relation to patriarchy,
capitalism, and new technologies. Stein's charged objects are in flux; they
become living objects, drawn from vernacular culture, and which dispensewith hierarchies because they are constantly changing according tolocation and individual needs.
The American curator and art critic Lawrence Alloway suggeststhat the reciprocity between artist and viewer, object and environment,
forecasts the future, and that it is a future based on maximum intimacy
and the viewer’s proximity and participation. It is apparent that Stein’s
work does this, engaging audiences and encouraging them to interact withher sculptures and wearable art.8 These are objects that on a new life only
when spectators become participants in the dynamics her work enables.
The reciprocity of static objects and human mobility is an essential part of
Stein’s aesthetic, and this interaction catapulting her art from themeditative realm into the lived in world. By opening up a complex set ofinterconnections between location, gender, and sexuality Stein’s work
speaks not only to new ways of living, but also to fresh ways of defining
citizenship, equality, and difference. As an artist and a woman, Linda Steinunderstands, better than most, the significance of 21st-century bodypolitics.

8 Alloway, Lawrence. “Problems of Iconography and Style” in Urban Encounters: Art Architecture Audience.

Philadelphia: Institute of Contemporary Art, University of Pennsylvania, 1980, 15.

Summer 2011 53

Tom’s Story
Merina Canyon
By the time I was eleven years old, I was afraid something was
wrong with me. That’s the year I fell in love with Rosanna. When her
fresh round face showed up in my fifth grade class, she stood out like a roseamong a bunch of ragged weeds. To my eleven-year-old point of view, herdimpled face was excitingly unfamiliar and adorable.
Her desk was directly behind mine, and when I turned around tosay hi, she said, “You’re cute for a tomboy.”“Call me Tom,” I replied.
It just so happened that I was a tomboy extraordinaire. I was
growing up with two older brothers who insisted that girls weren’t
supposed to be as strong as boys, but that just made me want to bestronger—like them.
A daring idea had occurred to me back in second grade that I
might actually be able to be a boy after I tucked my long hair into a
baseball cap and snuck into my cousin’s boys-only birthday party. I
wondered if anyone could tell the difference. I told the boys my name was
Tom and chased them with a croquet mallet. Then we all jumped out of atree into a sand pile while hollering like Tarzan.
So “Tom” took one look at Rosanna’s new blue eyes and fell inlove. The feeling was so strong that every day at school, I seemed to surf
on a wave of excitement. Maybe I really could be a boy just like I had
been at that party, and all the kids would just accept me, and maybe
Rosanna could love Tom, too.
With new concern for my appearance, I chose to wear only
straight-legged pants, white Go-Go boots which were all the rage, a neatold pinstriped suit jacket my brother gave me, and my most prized
possession—a real Beatles’ cap with “Ringo” printed inside it.
My best friend, Jody, also a tomboy, had gone with me to the only
hat shop in our Midwestern town after The Beatles had been on The Ed
Sullivan Show. With saved-up allowances, we each bought a black cap togo with our new Beatles’ mop-top haircuts. I said, “You wait, Jody. I’mgiving up violin for guitar.” Jody already had a new guitar.
Jody was tall and somewhat clumsy, but active and more boyish
than I in appearance. She lived only three blocks from me and tried toremember to call me Tom, but just like everyone else, usually forgot. We
often walked home from school together and then shot baskets in the alley
behind her house. Sometimes we’d practice swinging baseball bats as hard

54 Sinister Wisdom 83 – Identity and Desire

as we could or jump off her garage roof and land in the dirt pile. We werestrong. And we liked it.
Jody seriously impressed me and made me jealous when she got a
new gold Stingray bike with a banana seat and high-rise handlebars. It had
Tony the Tiger® handgrips, and Jody would buzz around yelling, “It’s
GRRRE--AAT!” I just had an old blue girl’s bike that I called
Thunderbolt.
I don’t quite remember how I came to confide my secret love of
Rosanna to Jody. But I do remember that as we shot baskets in the alley,
Jody told me that she had talked to her mom about liking Rosanna. Her
mom had said, “Don’t worry about it—it’s just puppy love.”
Puppy love! How could Jody go to her own mother and tell her she
liked a girl? And how could Jody’s mother so casually dismiss it? Even I
knew things like that had to be kept secret, and I lived in fear of my motherfinding out what was going on in my head. I knew it was weird and I had
to be careful.
And now Jody liked Rosanna, too? My best friend wanted thesame thing I did? If given a choice, would Rosanna choose Tom or Jody?
At some point, we must have decided to put this question to thetest because I vividly remember the three of us alone in the playgroundafter school. Rosanna, softly laughing at Jody’s dumb knock-knock jokes,
was swaying in one of the swings. Then Jody and I took turns pushing her.
The one who was not pushing stood in front of the swing, catching a quick
kiss on the lips as Rosanna sailed into the waiting face. I remember that
Jody and I had to take off our Beatles’ caps and hang them on thehandlebars of our bikes. Rosanna thought the whole thing was cute andsaid that she liked us both equally.
But I thought I was much cuter than Jody, and I wanted Rosanna
to like me more than she liked Jody. I believed that Rosanna should like me
more. She had to like me more.
Not long after that, Rosanna agreed to meet me after supper backat the deserted school building. We went to the bottom of an outside,concrete stairwell that only the janitor was supposed to use. Rosanna hadjust gone with her older sister to the new movie Beach Blanket Bingo andwanted to show me how Frankie and Annette kissed.
“You have to have your hands behind your back,” she said, “andthen lean way forward until your lips meet mine in a smack.”
I hadn’t seen the movie, but I was riveted to the kiss. It was fun,daring, exciting, and I wanted more.
Soon Rosanna allowed me to wrap my arms around her, and we
kissed longer. We didn’t open our mouths (I didn’t even know about thatyet), but I could feel her tongue pressing just behind her lips, as if it wereSummer 2011 55

searching for a way out.
At night I noticed my longing and my fear growing stronger. If
anyone else knew about this, the world just might fall apart. Of course,
Jody knew about the stairwell dates, but it didn’t seem to bother her. She
wasn’t as stuck on Rosanna as I was, and she wasn’t alarmed by any of thekids at school talking about us tomboys and how weird we were for liking
Rosanna.
But I was alarmed. I wanted more and more of something I knew
had to be kept secret. The desire for Rosanna flowing through my bodyseemed impossible to cover up. I would play my 45s over and over and fallasleep to The Beatles singing, “She loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah…”
One evening, late in the spring, Rosanna and I went from thestairwell at school and cuddled on her front porch. I could hear mymother’s voice calling me from way down the street. It was getting dark,
and I knew I was supposed to be home before the streetlights came on, butsome big magnet on Rosanna’s front porch just wouldn’t let me go. I waswith her, and all I ever wanted was to be with her.
I jumped when my mother’s voice was now only a few yards away,
and Rosanna’s big sister stuck her head out the door and said, "What's
going on here?" I swung around to see my mother in the streetlight holdinga yardstick at a sharp angle.
Dashing off Rosanna’s porch (somehow breaking that magnetic
spell), I ran home as fast as I could with my angry mother trailing behindme saying, “You just get yourself home, young lady!”
At home I tried to act like nothing was wrong. “What’s on TV?” I
said loudly to one of my brothers. He didn’t look up. Mom put theyardstick back in the corner by the phone and didn’t talk to me.
The next day after school, I followed Rosanna to her babysitting
job, and after hanging around a whole hour, I spent all my allowancebuying her a hot fudge sundae at the drugstore. She quietly accepted theice cream but said, “I gotta go home right after this.” I had the growing
fear that at any moment she was going to draw the line.
Then one day instead of going to the Girl Scout meeting at myown house (my mother was the Girl Scout leader), I had to go to an extra
violin lesson for some dumb school performance. I was scared. Girls frommy class would be at my house with my mother, and I wouldn’t be there to
make sure nobody said anything about Tom and Rosanna. I hurried homewith my violin but the meeting was over.
That night I called Jody, and she said that Nan Snyder had blurted
out “Merina loves Rosanna! Everybody knows it!” Jody told me that mymother didn’t say anything.
But Merina loves Rosanna? Didn’t they all know I was really Tom?
Wasn’t I Tom? And what would my mother do with this awful truth?

56 Sinister Wisdom 83 – Identity and Desire

My mother never said a word to me. I walked around in agony
both from my intense longing for Rosanna and from my terrible fear that
this thing that was wrong with me would be revealed to the world and theworld would stop.
The next day after school, I was riding bikes with Rosanna. Jody
had been hanging around with us but she had gone home the minute hermother called. Rosanna stopped a half block from her house, and with one
foot, balanced herself on the curb. It was her sister’s bike and way too tallfor her.
She finally said, “I have to tell you something, Tom.”With a jump in my heart, I pulled my blue Thunderbolt around in
front, facing her. I tipped my Ringo cap over one eye and crossed my arms
in front of me.
“What we’ve been doing...” she began. She was wobbly on the big
bike, and she fiddled with the pedals. “What we’ve been doing...has tostop.” Just then the bike fell out from under her and she crashed against
the curb.
I reached down and took hold of Rosanna’s handlebars. In one
swift move I brought the bike upright. Rosanna climbed back on, a little
blood showing on her skinned knee. “I gotta go,” she said, almost crying.
I held onto her handlebars for one more second and then let go.
After Rosanna struggled away on the big bike, I stayed there at the
curb for a while. The world seemed to spin down. The image of myself as
Tom grew fainter and fainter.
The streetlight came on. And my mother started calling me, hervoice sharp and high. “Mer-Ree-Naah!” It was louder than I had ever
heard it before. I went home.
I went home knowing there was something hurting inside me.
And that somehow, I would keep it a secret.

Summer 2011 57

Audre Lorde and David Ruffian in Heaven
Stephanie Barnes

After Hans Ostrom

They call each other Ruff
and Warrior Woman. David swivels his hips
to her poems. Audre calms him with the theory of difference.
In heaven Audre wears contacts, wears
silkscreened t-shirts with vests.
David has gained healthy, lean weight, wears
a low-cut fadeand clean white tees.
They lay head to head picking up each others rhythm
an up tempo downbeat that he could drum out: forever.
Audre’s poems now contain lines of cocaine,fists, and redemption. A direct line to Hitsville,
USA. His grit makes her smile.
David learns more about “we” instead of “me”. This afternoon
he will sing excerpts from “The Cancer
Journals” to the tune of “I Wish it would Rain.”
Audre will end the day by suddenly reciting “My Girl”. Alonein their adjoining apartments, they will drown out the soundsof the city. They will not think of New Yorkor Motown. They know why God put them here
together. It’s because they were blackin America. It’s because God
is a rolling stone. It’s because God
is a black unicorn fullof rage.

58 Sinister Wisdom 83 – Identity and Desire

Sakia Gunn, 15
Stephanie Barnes
If someone chooses to live a certain lifestyle, they must pay a certain* price.
—Ferdinand Williams, Principal of Westside HighI never knew you
didn’t hear about you till two springs
had come and gone
and more like us have come and gone.
This is a poem
about the certain price you paid
at that dark, deserted bus stop, innocently
waiting with a group of friends. A poem
spray-painted
in ugly drooling letterson the hood of a white station wagon
a reminder that thisis a constant warzone
with no forgiveness for disclosure.
A poem written in the rattleof your last breathas you bled out in the comfort
of familiar arms.
This is an invisible poem
for an erased minority, hiddenin the interlacing intersectionsof black, female, gay. A poem
about a worldthat washed your life away, that would
just as easily wipe mine clean. A poemof another city, anotherdyke, another young woman desiring
to deny subterfuge.
I never knew you, but yours
is another death chained
to my life line. Another death screaming
alive, the fear infused in our reality.

Summer 2011 59

The Day after Breaking
Stephanie Barnes
My shadow breaks brittle against the linoleum floor
and she’s taking long hauls off a short cigarettesays it relaxes her, the eddying smoke trails
I feel my lungs capsize
sink to the bottom of my body of waternext to my imploded heart. I drown on my silence
unable to tape together a plausible scenario of events
the break of cigarettes between brittle fingers
the breaking of streams of daylight across the room
the broke of my unsteady shoulders
pieces settling in between the cracks of my broken shadow on the linoleum
floor.

60 Sinister Wisdom 83 – Identity and Desire

Cinnamon Rolls
Lisa L. Moore
My feet keepslipping awayfrom me on
the couch as
I sit propped
against the upholsteredarm
my toes cool my
pen warm mylap a piss-poor desk.
I was a pisspoor butch in Chicago letme tell you—she said.
In Chicago I
ate a big steak anda lobster tail withmy first lover—a greatbutch, one of my favorites.
Where are all the butches
going? lament the femmes
trying to support
transitions as their girlfriends
becomemen.
That’s just how she
now hehow herolls.
He loves cinnamon rolls justlike when he wasa girl.

Summer 2011 61

Acts of Devotion
for Camile
Lisa L. Moore
Answer the phone.
Happy to see your friend’s
name on the caller ID.
Hear someone else’s voice deepand serious. Beginto listen. Walk
into the other room.
Scream.
Drive through sheets of rain.
Dodge lightning.
Let thunder hush you.
Madge drives. You wail.
Madge drives. You don’tknow where you’re going.
Madge drives. You zip
the hood onto your raincoat.
Please God
help Camile.
Please God
be with Camile.
Please God
please God
please.
By the time you get there
she has asked for help
breathing. By the time
you get there, she is in
multiple system failure.
By the time
you get there
her Punjabi
grandmother has
wailed Pa Rabh62 Sinister Wisdom 83 – Identity and Desire

take me instead please
God take me instead please
God please.
Kerry Cory Liz
Allison Sherry Paula
Erin Eric Victoria
Shane Shane’s new boyfriend Molly
Chia Mama-jit Papa-jit
Jeanette what’s her name again Kelly
Irfan the other Carey
where are Jason and Mike
Jess comes in tomorrow.
Auntie. Soresh. Brigitte. Anoukh
Anoukh’s new wife. Camile
wan and chic in an orange
sari in their wedding
pictures.
Slumped in a plastic
chair you hear on eitherside conversations aboutbacon.
In the empty room
her grandfather sits. Greethim in English. We’reso sorry. Take hiscold smooth hands he
begins to shake his lips
tremble we all
weep. Later bringhim water in a Styrofoamcup. He will wave
you off.
Irfan “an emergency room doc”
“it could be twenty minutes or
three days” “she’s not dyingof cancer after all” “it looked
ominous last summer at
MD Anderson” the bone marrow

Summer 2011 63

donor center called me thisweek I’m a match for a
newborn baby boy withleukemia
Paula says, delete all thearticles Paula says, ask for help
finding the good poem inside
the writing Paula says, I was
so lucky
to have had good teachers“don’t buy books from me, I’m too
expensive” “they removed the fibroids andendometriosis” “I have parent
envy” “Michael was badly
behaved” “I don’t want to remember
her like this” “Dallas is unbearable if
you’re not white” “being Hazel’s mother isthe best thing I’ve ever done” “weadopted him” “Angie, Camile and I
chose the men’s tie insteadof the ladies’ pouf” “she’s gone”
the sock monkey
the sock frog
and the knitted
penguinwith the missing footall live together under
the new moon.
Kiss. Disinfect every time, then stop.
Kiss her forehead. Kiss her cheek.
Kiss your hand. Kiss her tears.
Kiss of death.
Kiss.

64 Sinister Wisdom 83 – Identity and Desire

Baby-Daddy
Lisa L. Moore
My baby-daddy’s church isreal Jesusy
and all gay.
I held Jon close today
salty tears on my neck
until long after
the congregation seated itself again.
The two of us, wound into a pillar
stood weeping
each for a different
homecoming. Come,
I said, to my party.
At homenew room to pass
one another, a drink, my butt, my lover’s belly,
new room
teak-flooredking-bedded
grass-green velvet and cherry mohair
her china
my berries
in the cut
in the groove
flowing scarlet and fecund.
Ripple chips and onion dip
Ruby’s Barbequebox wine
Leilah’s lemon bars
but José
flakedon the cheesecake
even after we foundgoofy Murphy
his dog
who ran away
the night of the UT bowl gamewhen José’s house was robbed
the eight-foot door
kicked insomehowat the top.

Summer 2011 65

My baking challenge: to prepare
delicious baked goods for all of you
And thinking of lemon bars
to unlock the door.

66 Sinister Wisdom 83 – Identity and Desire

It's Not Their Fault
Monisha Lakhotia
Grass blades and dandelions folded under Andy's feet as she
walked through the park. Around her, excited screeches of playing
children assaulted the air. Andy didn't stop to enjoy their fun. Instead, she
kept walking, eyes darting around the yellow-splotched area. Her attention
caught on a woman seated in one of the many patches of dandelions. Evenfrom behind, Andy could recognize her.
Sighing, she walked over and plopped to the ground next to her—
her friend. The girl didn't jump or budge. She kept her eyes on thehorizon. Andy waited; seconds ticked by, but the girl ignored Andy.
"Why aren't you answering my calls?" Andy asked.
The girl didn’t answer. She stared ahead, mouth firmly shut.
Andy started to repeat the question, assuming her friend just didn't
hear her over the noise of the children playing nearby.
A quiet "I've been busy," cut her off.
"Too busy to talk to me?" Andy asked.
Her friend shrugged. Neither said a word. Laughter from thechildren filled the silence.
"Iris," Andy started, "What's been up with you?""What do you mean?" her friend asked.
"You've been acting strange lately."
Iris snapped her head to face Andy, emerald eyes sparkling withlife, "You noticed?""Everyone's noticed.""Oh," her eyes dulled, "What have they been saying?"
Andy hesitated. The rumors floated through her head, each morevicious than the last. She couldn't repeat them, at least not out loud,though Iris probably already knew the false facts attached to her name.
"Nothing," Andy answered, "They haven't been saying anything."
Iris rolled her eyes. She turned her attention from Andy to the dandelions
around her. Andy watched as Iris ran her hands along their yellow heads,
once again ignoring her. None bent under the light pressure she put on
them.
"Can't you tell me what's wrong?" Andy asked.
"Nothing's wrong," Iris returned, plucking a dandelion from thepatch.
Andy gaped in disbelief. Iris twirled the dandelion between her
fingers.
"Yes, there is," Andy insisted.
"There isn't."

Summer 2011 67"You can't just claim there's nothing wrong and hope it goesaway.""I can when there's nothing wrong," Iris kept her eyes on thedandelion dancing between her fingertips.
"Stop playing with that damn weed and talk to me," Andy
demanded.
"It’s a dandelion," Iris corrected.
"And dandelions are weeds.""That's not their fault."
Andy drew her eyebrows together, confused. Iris gave no
explanation. She simply continued to twist the dandelion, as if what she
said was normal.
"Do I need to call the men with the white jackets?" Andy asked.
"Now you sound like them," Iris pointed out.
"I'm sorry," Andy said quickly. "I didn't mean it like that. I was
joking."Iris shrugged again, dismissing the matter. The excited cries ofchildren echoed around them. Andy blocked them from her head. Her
focus remained on her friend and her distraught behavior. Careful words
rolled around in her head, forming phrases to avoid hurting Iris.
"Dandelions can't be at fault for what they are," Andy said,"They're not humans. They don't have a say in how they're labeled.""Then why label them weeds?""Because that's what they are. To us, they're weeds and we label
them accordingly.""How is that fair to them?""It doesn't have to be fair to them.""And why doesn't it?" Iris snapped, turning her head to face Andy.
"Because they're just weeds.""But that's not their fault," Iris insisted.
"Well they can't change that.""We can though.""No one is going to change that, Iris. Live with it."
"So just because we're humans and we're so amazing we get todecide that dandelions are morally corrupt and must be called weeds?""Who said anything about them being morally corrupt? They'rejust weeds.""Weeds are the sin of the plant world. They're an infestation thatmust be taken care of by extreme means."
Andy stared into Iris's eyes. She didn't know what had provoked
Iris’s newfound fascination for plant rights but her passion for it wouldn't
get her anywhere. Weeds were weeds. Nothing could be done about it,
just as there was nothing that could be done about Iris's mental processes.

68 Sinister Wisdom 83 – Identity and Desire"Iris," Andy said slowly, "You need to stop thinking."
Iris sighed and stared at the dandelion again, "You don't
understand.""Help me understand.""I can't.""Just tell me,” Andy pushed, “I'm sure I'll understand." She waited
for something that would give her a clue as to why Iris was being moreunusual than normal. The park was silent, aside from the children playing.
Iris twisted the stem of the dandelion around her finger. Finally, she
mumbled, "I'm a weed.""You can't be a weed. You're human," Andy reasoned.
"But I'm no better than a weed.""I don't know what you're talking about.""Exactly."
Frustration bubbled in Andy's stomach, traveled through her
veins, took up space in her mind. Andy knew Iris was hurting. She
understood that Iris didn’t want to disclose anything more than that. Andy
didn't know how to help, but she knew she was the only one who would try
helping.
"Iris, if you would talk to me, I would understand," Andy asserted.
"No, you wouldn't.""I'm your best friend. It's my job to understand.""Just because it's your job doesn't mean you care.""I do care.""Oh, yeah? I bet you didn't notice till your friends pointed it out.""I did notice before that. You've been avoiding me for the past
three weeks! Of course I noticed! I just thought that you needed time to
get whatever was going on sorted out, that you would confide in me atsome point. That's what most friends do. Did you confide in me? No!”
Andy paused. “And now you're spouting this bull—"Andy couldn’t finish her sentence. Iris's lips pressed against hers,
and Andy's eyes widened. The feel of Iris's soft lips escalated her heartbeat.
Then Iris pulled away, searching Andy's eyes before turning tostare at the horizon. Andy didn’t move. Shocked, she was unable to turnher eyes away. Her heart hammered in her ears, and her stomach flipped.
The park was completely silent. No children screamed in the
background. If they were still in the park, Andy didn't know—and did she
care. All that mattered was Iris, who began running her hands through thedandelion patch in-between them. She understood her friend's incessant
weed talk now. Why hadn't she noticed before?
Andy captured Iris's hand. She laced their fingers together. Iris
turned her head to face Andy, brows drawn together.

Summer 2011 69"It can't be that bad being a dandelion," Andy said, "especiallywhen you have another dandelion by your side."70 Sinister Wisdom 83 – Identity and Desire

Subject to Anatomy
for my great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great granddaughter, who is
my inspiration

Bishop C. Knight
I think a lot, especially about this, and my thoughts stir up (my)passions.
Sometimes when I’m looking at someone, I realize they arelooking at me. They are not me, and I wonder if everyone else, like myself,
forgets that this world is not their own Truman Show. (I have always foundit humorous that cutely queer Ellen DeGeneres was the character named
Cynthia and that she was the producer of Truman’s scripted life.) Nope, I
will tell myself at these moments, that other person does not know you just
had this realization because, no, that person is their own person living intheir own skin. Right now, they’re looking at me, as I look at them, andthat’s when I want to eat the other person up. I want to lovingly peel theirskin, like I’d peel the skin off a grape, and then investigate what
inspirational juices gush through their heart, intestines, and bowels. I do
not want them to be a them, or me to be a me.
I talk to the topic of anatomical skin with you because it’s the bestplace to begin an analysis of the human body’s presence in and impact on
herstory:Your sweater. Your bra. That ratty t-shirt. Frumpy pajamas,
under the white cotton sheets your grandparents gave you. The blouse youbought on last weekend’s shopping trip downtown. Hanes, wool socks, silk
slips, booties, scarves, blue ties, blazers, sneakers, sandals, clunky maryjanes, flannel shirts.
When I’m uncomfortable, I’ll pull my sweater or scarf up aroundthe lower part of my face, forcibly muzzling myself. At these moments, myeyeballs bulge and I say, “No, eyes, no. That’s a dead give away. No.” So I
relax my forehead and try to appear coolly collected. Attentively focusedon the listener, I agree with whatever, “Hmm,” but my knitted scarf
remains glued to my mouth.
Why are you here, right now? Where were you before, and where
do you want to go next? When did you decide to style your hair that way?
How do you judge your parents as fellow adults; when did you start to seethem in this ungodlike light? What does red look like to you; are you color
blind? I have to take off my glasses every time I get high. Do you thinkthat’s as fascinating as I do? Are you homosocial or homosexual? You
should be. What did you dream this morning? How does my voice makeyou feel? That woman’s annoying voice makes me want to kiss her. I’ve

Summer 2011 71

found that fascinating. How would you behave if murder and cannibalism
were socially sanctioned? How about making grades illegal? On the countof three, can we have a global guttural scream? Thank you. Does incest
make you angry? I have recently been pondering social anarchy, while theauthor Donald Barthelme provocatively asks his readers, “Do you feel thatthe creation of new modes of hysteria is a viable undertaking for the artistof today?” What is your idea of peace, your set of shoulds, and would thatreally satisfy you? Have you ever stolen anything; why (not)? How would
you survive in prison? Do you celebrate Christmas? When was the lasttime you rode a bike? a horse? a groin? What is your favorite memory
from high school? from college? How can this society battle date rape?
When is your birthday and, in eighty years, do you think today could be
your deathday?
You may sneer but, as you do so, your body is decaying second bysecond, tick by tock, cell by cell, until one day every smidgeon of yourneglected youth will wither away. That is life, and what I would like toknow about you is from where your deepest darkest dread stems.

72 Sinister Wisdom 83 – Identity and Desire

DesireAnne FairbrotherSuch passion I had for you
Desire fierce fire
Awe tentative and magical
I adored you
Thrilled at your touch
My being, my body responsive to yours
Such desire, such promise of intimacy
I had for you
Now the embers, barren and sad
Burn me still with loss, regret, and disappointment
Ugly scars that hurt me when I move, or when I am stillSummer 2011 73

Following In Grandmother’s Footsteps
Sally R. BrunkI am of the Ojibwa tribe, often referred to as the Anishinabe. I amof my Father’s clan, the Bear, and yet also my Mother clan the Loon. The
bear is the protector of our people; the loon carries the hurt of the tribe on
its back.
My Grandmother taught me our language, and many stories andtraditions of our tribe before the tender age of five. The elders teach thechildren in our tribe to lay the foundation for the coming generations. By
the time I was five and reading books, I was totally immersed in our
culture. To me, it wasn’t our culture; it was merely how my family lived.
I am full-blooded Anishinabe, born and raised on my Father’s
tribal lands known as Keweenaw Bay. But, I am a member of my Mother’stribe in Wisconsin, the Lac du Flambeau band of Ojibwa. My name is
Maagwan-ni-niigabokwe, which means: Standing Feather Woman. My
Father’s name was Nagon-niigabo, my Mother’s Bedway-way-gizhi-gokwe.
My Grandmother Brunk’s name was Gabo-wance and my GrandmotherPine’s name was Abe-disa-niikwe. For their own privacy, I will not reveal
what their names mean, but would like people to understand where my
blood comes from.
My foundation was my Grandmothers. My Grandfathers bothdied before I was born, I never had the chance to know them, except
through photographs. My Grandmothers were the most direct influence
on my upbringing; they laid the groundwork of my learning andperspective on which I viewed the world. My first images and memories
are of warm, comforting voices in Ojibwa. I see the smiles of myGrandmothers peering down; I remember the toys handmade for me. A
beaded rabbit’s foot was my prized possession for many years. It also had apurpose for my Grandmothers and Mother: it rattled, and they always
knew where I was.
My Grandmothers never spoke anything but our language to me.
This was the most important gift they gave me. Because they saw the
decline in fluent speakers, it was essential to them that I learn our
language. It is in our language that I spent many hours immersed in;wrapped in the hum of my Grandmothers voices. They banded together
and decided I would not be a child lost to the boarding schools; that I
would learn what was needed to help my family and tribe later in life.
Grandmother Brunk died the spring before my thirteenthbirthday, yet she teaches me day after day. Since her death there havebeen times that I have experienced problems or wasn’t following the paththat I should. In these times, Grandmother will come to me. In my dreams

74 Sinister Wisdom 83 – Identity and Desire

and my thoughts, she is there to guide me or reassure me I will survive thiscrucial time.
Life is a circle and, that circle has taught me, we evolve and better
ourselves continuously. We learn from the past and what is offered andshown us. At home, I was given directions and was taught lessons I would
need for this life.
The radiator crackled, slowly releasing a warm blast of heat. I satsilently on the floor facing Grandmother’s bed. It was eight o’clock in themorning and the room’s light grew brighter as the sun fought its way into
Grandmother’s room. I had arrived with my parents a half hour before. I
now waited as patiently as a ten year old can wait, for my Grandmother toawaken. I sat and looked around Grandmother’s room. To me, it was thesafest place in the world. On every wall were photos of her children,
grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. Generations unfolded on her
walls. I have always associated this room’s smell with her, it was a part ofNokomis. It smelled of the tobacco, sage, and sweet grass she burned every
day as an offering to Gitche Manitou. It also smelled of the candy she hidfrom my parents as a special treat for her grandchildren. Grandmotheralways had something for her grandchildren. I held the tobacco I was tooffer, and thought of the seventy-mile trip my parents religiously took tothis place. I wondered what Nokomis would teach me today.
She was eight-nine and the mother of nine children. Nokomis has
survived the taking of the tribe’s land, and the boarding schools, which
took her children from her. My Grandfather Frank had died in 1964. After
his death, my Grandmother moved to a small house built for her on the
Lac Vieux Desert reservation. Nokomis was strong willed, but was also
gentle and kind. She had the determination to survive anything life could
throw at her. She did not demand respect; it was bestowed upon her
because she had leadership and a quiet intensity that people listened to.
Her magnetic personality is something I still find fascinating.
Since the time I could speak, the only language Grandmother would
address me in was Ojibwa. To my parents it was vital I learn from
Nokomis. Every Saturday, I would sit on the floor and listened to her
stories, often closing my eyes, seeing nothing and hearing only her voice. I
would lay on the floor near her feet wrapped in her voice and the scent ofsage and sweet grass. In the hours of listening to her, notes were nevertaken, but her words were absorbed into my head, and into my heart. I
literally learned by our oral traditions. She was the one to share teachingsof right and wrong, to speak of oral traditions of our clan and tribe. Every
one of my seven brothers and sisters experienced what I was going
through, but had the opportunity of living near Grandmother at the time.

Summer 2011 75

My parents moved from Watersmeet to Baraga in 1968. My
Father was hired at the assembly plant Pettibone and two years later, I wasborn. My Father moved Nokomis from Watersmeet to live with us my first
five years because Grandmother said it was a crucial time to teach me.
Teachings began for me, long before I even attended school. My
Grandmother Pine gave me teachings when my parents could make thetwo-hour trip to visit her in Lac du Flambeau, until she passed when I wassix. It is patience that was taught to me by my Grandmothers and it is thelessons of perseverance that I follow from my parents.
Together, over a span of years, they brought up eight children.
They survived the harsh poverty, racism, and hard living of reservation
life. They moved their children from the Lac Vieux Desert reservation to
the Keweenaw Bay reservation in search of a better life.
My circular way of learning and living began very early. Before I
stepped into a classroom, my brain made connections with everything. I
searched for a place within that circle where an answer could be found. If I
didn’t understand something at school or there was a misconception about
our people, I ran to my Grandmothers. They often said in their wise andhumble manner that the outside world does not always understand Indianpeople; yet I should never let it hinder me from learning the good parts ofeducation.
I watched Nokomis as she slept. She had a long thick braid of grayblack hair she let me play with and brush. Her face had deep lines, which
she said were from “smiling too much.” Grandmother had deep browneyes that sparkled when she smiled or laughed. Her nose was round and alittle stubby, just like mine. At ten years old, this was the coolest discovery.
Nokomis stirred and noticed me. As was custom, I held my eyes downnever directly looking at her. This was done as the highest form of respect.
“Come here, child, let Nokomis look.” She embraced me andkissed my head. I left to bring her breakfast in to her. My Mother always
made Grandmother’s breakfast and took care of her on weekends. I waitedpatiently now, because soon Grandmother would tell me another story.
My time with Nokomis was never boring.
“Did your week at school go well, Little One?” Nokomis asked. I
immediately went sullen.
“Boys at school pulled my braids and called me Injun. The teacher
gave me detention for pushing one of the boys.” I reluctantly added.
Nokomis sighed and quietly said, “Its right for you to feel upset
Little One, but wrong to use violence to express it.” I felt she wasdisappointed and waited for her explanation.
Nokomis paused and started. “A long time ago before your Papa
was born our tribe lived in the village. We didn’t live in town, in thesehouses now built for us. I was the oldest. I had to walk the seven miles into

76 Sinister Wisdom 83 – Identity and Desire

town to buy provisions for the family. The storekeepers and townsfolk, they
didn’t like us Natives. At every turn, they called me names, tried to shortme on what little money we had, or told me to stay out of town. I was
called dirty little Indian, too many times to count. Through all their taunts
and vicious treatment, I never said an unkind word. I may have thought it,
but never said it. I’ve been taught better. I didn’t say anything at all. I
didn’t sink to their level of behavior.”
Grandmother paused and gently cupped my face in her strong,dark-wrinkled palm. “Do you understand, child? The Brunks’ are of the
Bear clan and this is the protector of our people. It would be inappropriate
to act otherwise.” She smiled and waited patiently for my response.
“So pushing those boys for calling me names is bad for our clan?”
I asked.
Nokomis explained, “You are responsible to our family first, clan
second and then our tribe. All other members are also responsible to one
another. This is how our tribe survives.” This is how all my lessons andconversations with Grandmother went. Always, she let me come to myown conclusions, but gently corrected me if I was wrong.
I quietly asked, “Nokomis, are you disappointed in me?” Shelaughed, opened her arms to me and said, “No, Makoose (little bear) I
could never be disappointed in you, because you’re always learning.” Shehugged me and gave me some peppermint candy. At that particular point
in my life, all was well in the world.
Since the year Grandmother passed on, I have not spoken fluent
Ojibwa. Grandmother always kept me in practice and when she died myparents seemed to lose something. A bright light was gone from our lives.
They didn’t pressure me to speak Ojibwa and a part of me refused. To me,
it was a sacred part of my time with Grandmother I didn’t want to sharewith anyone else. All that she has taught me I remember to this day. She
taught me to respect my elders, the proper ways of our tribe and many
traditions and stories of our animal brothers.
Nokomis never had it easy. She spoke to me often of the difficultyof “walking the red road in the white man’s world.” She feared I would
lose my Native traditions as I grew older and experienced more of theworld. Often I witnessed her telling my father he had lost his way, meaning
he didn’t respect his heritage as he should. Boarding schools robbed muchof my father’s light and spiritual belief, which is the reason he sodesperately wanted his children to know their traditions.
To my parents it was very important that their children receive an
education, but also crucial their children learn Native traditions. My
parents were victims of the boarding schools; they were traumatized, andlost many of the years they should have had with their own Grandparents,

Summer 2011 77

learning our ways and culture. So my parents took every effort to makesure all eight of their children learn where they come from.
My greatest memories of Nokomis are when I was a small child. I
always slept with her and she would lull me to sleep by telling me stories.
When I had a nightmare or was sick, Nokomis took care of me. She would
take me for walks in the woods bordering our house and show me all theplants sacred to the Ojibwa. We would pick berries together in the summer
and she showed me to offer tobacco for the sacrifice made by the various
plants and berries we gathered. Grandmother explained the reasons to be
thankful. I was taught from a very young age: everything has a reason forbeing; everything will come full circle.
I took my Grandmother’s death extremely hard and went througha period of feeling lost and helpless. I often asked my Mother, “Who willteach me now?” My Mother’s only response was, “Grandmother musthave felt you were strong enough to learn on your own now.” I continued
to learn and her teachings influenced me then as they do now in all aspectsof my life. All that Gitche Manitou has created will come full circle; I see it
now in the following generation of Brunks. Grandmother would be proud.
At home, I sometimes watch my Mother patiently teaching her
grandchildren as my Nokomis taught me. I once asked her, “Why did you
not teach me all that you are teaching them?” She quietly said, “Because it
was not my place to teach you.”
It took me years of learning to understand the statement my
Mother made; but it makes all the sense in the world. I understand now,
what I experienced with Grandmother is something very special. It issomething not all Native children get to experience with their own
Grandparents. I know that someday I will be the teacher; I will be the one
to tell the grandchildren of the people that came before them. It is becauseof what my Grandmothers’ taught me then; that I think in this manner
now. Those thoughts are in my brain every morning when I offer tobacco.
My Grandmothers’ took it upon themselves to teach me; because it is theelders in our tribe that hold the knowledge. The elders hold the sacredstories of our tribe’s beginning, stories of our animal brothers, and the
traditions and old songs of our tribe. It is through them that I realized thatlife is a circle. The animal, plant and human spirits are connected.
Together we live to honor Mother Earth.
Grandmother’s influence is still with me; I still feel her presence
everywhere. I see it in my siblings; in the way they treat their children. I
was never hit as a child or scolded but we did have discussions of what I
had done wrong and how I was to correct it. This is how my nephews andnieces are taught. Our home was filled with love and laughter, and wasnever a depressing place. I was given a lot of hugs and affection, as weremy siblings. Attention was lavished on every child; because we were seen as

78 Sinister Wisdom 83 – Identity and Desire

the future leaders of our tribe. We have seen each other through many
hardships, but there have also been many happy times. Each experiencehas brought us even closer as a family. My Grandmother and her loving
presence have helped me survive many hard times of crisis. She has helped
me to become a strong person, proud of my heritage, and willing to teachothers what I know.

Summer 2011 79

Strained Class Windows
Judith K. Witherow“You People.” Every time I hear those ignoble words, I know it
isn't going to be good. They will always cause me to mentally andphysically cringe. When these words are heard since birth, you know
which rung of the ladder you're standing on.
"You People” should have indoor plumbing. How can you standthat outhouse? "You People” need to have electricity and running water.
Your house looks so small. How many of “You People” sleep in one bed?
(I shared a bed with two sisters and in the winter our body heat wasprobably the only thing that kept us from freezing to death). Why don't“You People” paint your house?
Poverty makes you so damned dumb that none of these things everoccurs to you. Someone pointing them out is like a giant wake-up slap on
the forehead. We could have painted any bare wood shack we ever lived inseven different colors, and it wouldn't have changed a thing. People still
would have said, "You People” are so gaudy, but that is all the tangible
difference it would have made. There would have been less money for foodand other survival necessities, but what the hell; it might have made us
easier to look at. That's what it is all about isn't it? Looks? Not the kind oflooks where someone is rolling their eyes while they are "trying" to talk toyou. This habit is the twin of “You People,” and you just want to haul out
a piece of tape and hold their eyes still so they can clearly see what you’resaying.
I’ve worked steadily for the past 35 years in the women’s
movement. I marvel at the serious lack of understanding concerning classand race among many activists. It has yet to be clearly defined orunderstood by many whom I’ve assumed would know the answer. I no
doubt recognize this lack because of my background. I’ve taken the time tolearn the ways of others and I don’t believe it’s too much to ask the same
be done in return.
For that matter, it’s a toss-up whether classism or racism bites the hardest.
Most times, I can't figure out why those who should know better still use
theories to define what should by now be accepted as fact. Reality: Insteadof debating these two issues to death, accept the words of those who’ve
always been there. Trust the women who know the answers from harshexperience.
Don’t ask me to supply further information when I’ve written an
article to back up my words. Three times in the last year and a half I’ve
been required to supply unnecessary justification for my work because
others held prejudice against my class and racial culture. For instance,

80 Sinister Wisdom 83 – Identity and Desire

when I stated the word “squaw” is derogatory to my people, a white editor
wouldn’t take my word for it. She told me she came from the Southwest
and had always used the word and no one corrected her. I’ll just bet noone had, and she considered herself a feminist without question.
I thought writing this article could be done objectively. However,the deeper old buried familial grief graves become, the angrier and sadderI become. If this weren't so Goddess-awful important, the dirt would bethrown back on. But, how will there ever be change unless all sides aretruthful?
As a poor, mixed-blood Native American Indian raised in thenorthern Appalachians, I will invite you into my life and reveal to you thesights, tastes, smells and life-limiting experiences that were in all honesty
not a part of your upbringing.
Despite numerous hardships, I graduated from high school andmade my family very proud. In retrospect, it’s now obvious I was
purposely kept at lower levels even though my grades were always high.
No one ever mentioned scholarships or college to me. After graduation, I
earned a living at various menial jobs. I didn’t have the confidence which
would allow me to apply for jobs that I definitely was qualified to fill.
I believe I was weeded out of the higher education track at an
early age. It's not the grades that count; it's your family's potential that ismeasured by the class yardstick. ("You People” would just take up a spacethat could be used by someone really serious about education.) Some veryfine minds get lost this way. Yes, you could go to college at a later date, butby then life has had so many whacks at you that it rarely leaves you withthe time or confidence to try. Survival often means feeding the belly before
the brain. The deprivation of either causes lifelong pain. There is only somuch humiliation you can cram into a child before you effectively crowd
her out of the system.
My father quit school in the third grade to help raise his brothers
and sisters. He was self-educated and gave me an abiding love for the
written word. My mother stayed in school until the eighth grade. Her one
clothing outfit was the top of a dress for a blouse and the bottom of a man's
overcoat for a skirt. She never stopped grieving for her lost chance. She
often spoke of her proudest moment as winning a poetry recital before theneed to quit school arose.
When my father was in his seventies and dying of cancer, he asked
me to cover for him because he had told a nurse a lie. I thought she musthave asked him about smoking or drinking. He said, "She asked me how
far I had gone in school. I thought fifth grade sounded much better so I
told her that. You back me up, kid." I asked him why he didn't just say hehad graduated. He looked like someone had pulled a gun on him. "Jesus,

Summer 2011 81

girl, you can't say anything like that." I tried to explain that it was a bullshit
question, but he would have none of it.
After many years of subjugation, you become your own overseer.
To this day, I see my nieces and nephews trash each other before the restof society gets a chance. I understand the dynamic perfectly. If you makefun of or hurt each other, then the second time around it doesn't pain as
much. You have already been prepared. When you depersonalize pain andsuffering you can ignore it. Only when a human face is superimposed onpoverty will this barbaric practice end.
The first house I remember living in contained three small rooms.
The next tenants used it as a chicken coop. My father had to walk stooped
over because the ceilings were about five feet high. He was six feet tall.
There was no water or electricity. The creek out back served as washingmachine, refrigerator, and bathtub. We never lived in a place that had
screen doors or screens in the windows. This allowed everything, including
snakes, to come and go at will. We learned at an early age to pound on thefloor before getting out of bed. This was so you didn't accidentally step on
a rat and get bitten. Why in the hell do rats always overrun the poor? I cantell you it’s not for the food. Maybe easier access is the only true
explanation.
When it snowed in the mountains, it would drift in through all thecracks that weren't full of paper or rags. We had very few blankets so coats,rugs, or clothes helped to keep us warm. The roof had so many holes that
we didn't have enough pots or cans to catch all the rain that trickled
through. Too bad we didn't have one of those glass ceilings I hear so muchabout. I'll bet it could have kept us dry, warm and in our place.
This basically describes the houses we grew up in. Each move wasa little better than the last. When I was five, we moved to a house that hadelectricity. When I was fourteen, we moved to a house that had both waterand electricity. We never acquired a place with screens or one that wasn't
overrun with rats. Yes, we set traps. Yes, we put out poison. Many times
my brother and I would sit in the basement with a .22 rifle and pick themoff when they popped their heads out.
People many times equate poverty with laziness. We always
worked. Dad worked at a sawmill and as a lumberjack. Later on, hebecame a carpenter. He never missed work and he never received any
benefits.
My dad, a good-looking, proud man, came from a long line ofalcoholics. My mother sprang from the same background, but only dad
succumbed to it. It still follows the male lineage on both sides of the family.
Twice while growing up, I heard people use my dad's name as a synonym
for drunk. If the alcohol colored and clouded the ugliness and made life
bearable, I can understand and forgive that. Yes, I'm sure the cheap wine

82 Sinister Wisdom 83 – Identity and Desire

he drank took material and mental tolls on all of us, but it was an illness
that he fought all of his life.
One time Dad committed himself into an alcohol rehabilitation
institution. Mom had to apply for welfare and sign a non-support orderthat she was told would never be served. It was protocol. (It was the only
time she ever applied for benefits). On the day of Dad's release, after twomonths of treatment, the police came and took him away in handcuffs
because of the non-support warrant. On the way home from jail, hestopped and bought a bottle of wine. It caused a breach in my parent’s
relationship that never healed. None of us had ever been in any trouble
with the law. The law was something you feared with all of your being. It
still is for my generation in the family.
Mom worked as a housekeeper for several families. I was ashamedof her for doing so. When high-school girls, whose homes Mom cleaned,
would tell me in a loud voice at school what a wonderful job Mom did, I
wanted to die. On the other hand, to Mom's final day she would brag
about what a good job she had done and how pleased her employers were.
She also waitressed and took factory work and thought it was agreat honor that she had never been fired from any job. Me? I just wanted
to shake her when she would start these raps and say, "Of course they
didn't fire you. You were the perfect shit-worker to fulfill any boss's dream.
You never complained, and you left pieces of your heart and healtheverywhere you worked." I never said it aloud to her.
She would look at me in total amazement whenever I tried to saythat perhaps things weren't as cut and dry as they appeared. She was thekindest woman I have ever known. I will never stop missing her truly
honest compassion. If there is a place of rest, hers should be an everlastingone.
Work. That's all we knew from childhood up. You name it, and wesold or did it. We picked and sold strawberries, blackberries, elderberries,
and blueberries. We sold Rosebud Salve® by the gross. Remember thosetacky cardboard signs that said "HOME SWEET HOME?" Sold them.
Countless packs of vegetable seeds were sold door to door. Lawn mowing,
gardening, babysitting, et cetera, et cetera. One of the hardest jobs was
picking princess pine. It's used to make funeral and Christmas wreaths, andgrows wild in the wintertime. It looks like wispy little pine trees. You were
paid six cents a pound for it. Believe me—it takes more backbreaking workthan you can ever imagine to fill a burlap sack to the top. Digging throughthe snow without the benefit of gloves or boots is something I wouldn't
wish on anyone. We would miss school to help with this effort. Whoever
was the youngest at the time would be placed in a hurriedly fashioned

Summer 2011 83

lean-to for shelter. Another young one would stay nearby and keep the firegoing while the rest of us picked the plants.
Our favorite spot, one where you weren't walking forever to findthe pine, was on a state game reserve. One time after picking all day, we
dragged our sacks up to the dirt road where Dad was to meet us. Instead ofDad, we were met by a game warden. He made us dump out all of our"piney." He said he had been watching us work all day and he wanted toteach us a lesson. Granddad and the rest of us were afraid, but Mom told
us it would be all right.
That night we went back and picked it all up by the light of themoon. Mom said it was too much work picking something growing wild—
something that should be ours for free—only to have it wasted by someone
who didn't know the first thing about nature.
Because of background and lifestyle, our family is riddled withdisease and disability. The water we drank wherever we lived came out of
mountains that had been strip-mined for coal. This same water flowed
down to the river and killed all of the fish and every other living organism.
The little town of four hundred, where we grew up, is now full of cancer,
multiple sclerosis, lupus, and many other diseases. I had melanoma, andneeded a section of my right foot removed. I have multiple sclerosis andsystemic lupus, as do other members of my family. It is uncommon to haveso many cases in such a small region. It's not contagious, so what is thecommon denominator?
I wish there had been a free lunch program when I was growing. I
know health problems like rickets due to malnutrition could have been
avoided. When I hear anyone go into a diatribe about all “You People”
wanting handouts, I go a bit crazy. The main memory of my childhood isalways being hungry. Oh sure, we gardened, hunted and fished, but it wasnever enough to feed eight or more people at one time. You can’t be raisedwith bottom-line hunger and little or no healthcare and have theexpectations of others. You learn to settle at an early age, and it remains
with you forever. It’s one of life’s evilest secrets, and those of mybackground never forget these well-schooled lessons.
Does society still not get it? An unhealthy child will be an
unhealthy adult. A sick, uneducated adult will not be able to work andcontribute like a healthy, educated one. This dynamic will cost from thecradle to the coffin if it’s not interrupted. Unlimited resources that are now
being spent to wage war all over the globe could be redirected to save thesame number of people.
My hope is that stories about abject poverty and lack of education
will be read and not forgotten. If more people aren't willing to work to help
us change our destiny the loss will soon be insurmountable. If the problems

84 Sinister Wisdom 83 – Identity and Desirecaused by classism and racism aren’t worked on continually we will neverequally share the benefits of society.

Former home of Judith Witherow in the Pennsylvanian Appalachians.
Photo by Sue Lenaerts.

Summer 2011 85

Book Reviews
Conditions of War (Northampton, MA: Fighting Words Press, 1993)
and The Vegetarian Myth (Oakland, CA: PM Press, 2009) by Lierre
Keith.
Reviewed by Robin ní Catáin
Lierre Keith's, Conditions of War, written in the Lesbian Avenger's
era, is an aching, honest, tender and fierce account of one small group of
women's efforts to fight back. It opens with the news of the murder of awoman in the small New England town where a handful of young lesbians
have organized to spray paint and resist. The book chronicles a crisis in thegroup that brings to a head some of the hidden dynamics of abuse that are
as inevitable in patriarchy as they are endemic. The final action, both of
the book and, likely, of the group that, like so many, is crumbling under
the weight of the pain and betrayal of what patriarchy has made us,radiates a power that brings goose bumps and chills down the spine.
Though the topic may seem heavy, Lierre's writing is a delight. Her lighttouch, humor, and tenderness make the heroine's journey to strength andfreedom an anthem. The book leaves one with the feeling that, even living
in conditions of an undeclared war, hope, joy, and redemption are
possible.
Lierre's more recent book, The Vegetarian Myth, is an even more
important work for our community. In it, she describes her twenty years as
a strict vegan, what it did to her health, and the reality of how our dietary
choices actually affect our planet. Like many of us, Lierre read Diet for a
Small Planet as a teenager. It started her on a course that many of us havetaken—believing that a vegetarian diet would save the world.
Unfortunately, things are more complicated than that and for many of us avegetarian diet is simply not healthy. As it also turns out, most of thesources of protein in a vegetarian diet (soy and grains) require agricultural
practices that may be disastrous for the planet. For those of you who
experience robust health on a vegetarian diet, reading this book maycompel you to rethink your dietary choices.
As a lesbian who chose not to become vegetarian (because mybody couldn't take it), I found The Vegetarian Myth to be a compendium of
everything I'd always wanted to say to the friends who made me feel guilty
for eating meat—intentionally or not.
For those of us who experience health problems, this book could
literally save our lives. If you, or someone you know, is vegetarian and ishaving obscure health problems, or if you are concerned about how ourdiet affects this achingly beautiful world we live in, you owe it to yourself to

86 Sinister Wisdom 83 – Identity and Desire

read this book. The Vegetarian Myth is available through most booksellers.
Conditions of War, and The Vegetarian Myth are both available at the author’s
website: http://www.LierreKeith.com
Missed Her: Stories by Ivan Coyote (Vancouver, BC: Arsenal Pulp
Press, 2010).
Reviewed by Robin ní Catáin
I first encountered Ivan Coyote's work on the side of a Port-a-Janeat the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival. As soon as I got home, I went
online, found and printed her essay, "In a Word: My name is Ivan and you
can call me she." I still have a couple of copies to hand to friends when it
seems appropriate.
What struck me about her work—compassion, heart, and a
response to our gendered lives grounded in real-world experience—is also
found in Missed Her. Ivan reminds me of me, and to quote the 12-year-old
girl in one of the stories, "nobody ever reminds me of me." I don't readmuch fiction, and avoid literature like the plague, mostly because it reflects
a world that, well, I don't really want to be a part of, a world that prettymuch wants no part of me. But Missed Her is a refreshing antidote to that
dilemma, like a spring rain on salty cheeks.
Coyote’s stories are the best that fiction can be; she describes
things as they are, and manages to do so in a way that calls us to be better:more hopeful and loving; more generous with each other; more gratefuland in awe of all that life can be.
Ivan Coyote calls herself a storyteller. She performs and writes
stories, mostly short vignettes that encapsulate some jewel of our humanity.
Like the mythic traditions of old, these are teaching tales, and what theyteach us is the power of love to redeem our world, and build healing
bridges across any divide.
Her stories make us proud to be a woman, a butch, a trans, alesbian—and proud to be yourself—after all, isn't that what stories aresupposed to do? Reading Coyote’s stories reminds me that I may havesurvived my twenties because courageous women like her did the work
she's doing: representing, showing up, going to those schools and standingon those stages and speaking truth.
If you need a warm hug—or a wet, sloppy kiss on the cheek from a
beloved family member—especially if you never got those hugs or kissesfrom family. Ivan did—if not literally, at least emotionally—and she's very
generous in her sharing of what it's like to have unconditional love andacceptance.

Summer 2011 87

I highly recommend reading Missing Her, it’s so good that I'mgoing to read the rest of Ivan's work myself. Missed Her is available on theauthor's web site: www.IvanCoyote.com, orGirl Unwrapped by Gabriella Goliger (Vancouver, BC: Arsenal Pulp
Press, 2011).
Reviewed by Ruth Mountaingrove
We first meet the girl on Sabbath, pre-adolescent, so this is acoming of age and coming out novel. The time is the 1960s. Toni is anonly child. Her parents are scarred by the memories of the Holocaust, by
their having to flee for their lives, mourning those relatives they left behind
and a secret Toni keeps trying to learn.
Toni is a tomboy. She has a gang of friends—all boys—and ishappiest when she is in torn jeans and beat-up sneakers. She is the despairof her mother Lisa who brings home beautiful dresses for her little girl who
doesn’t appreciate these gifts. Both parents, we are told are well dressed.
Her father is an accountant and a collector of rare books. Sometimes heshares this with Toni who loves to sit on his lap
but largely he is a remote man. There are words that Toni must notsay, that are not spoken aloud, histories she is not told about.
We next meet Toni at her menarche where she cannot believe she
must bleed every month. At her mother’s insistence they moveto a better neighborhood and Toni loses her pals.
In high school, like many an adolescent, Toni does not fit in and she
hates gym because she has to take showers with the other girls. She
manages to put it off until the other girls have gone. She has a friend Judy
who is just as awkward as she is. When Toni says she wishes she was dead,her shocked her mother says “But do we ask death to take us, no, no, noteven in our darkest moments. To die is to give Hitler victory.”
When she is 15, Toni’s parents send her to a co-ed summer camp soshe can make some friends. She likes the boys to play with but cannot get
excited as the other girls do, and when Janet, one of the camp counselors,
touches her shoulder, Toni falls in love. Toni doesn’t understand why she
feels the way she does, but begins to look up words in the dictionary andread some Freud in her father’s rare books. Now she knows she is alesbian. What to do about that?
Toni torn between Janet and suicide stops in at a little store where
she sees school supplies, tomorrow school begins and buys supplies
deciding to be an egghead. She will get the best grades, which she proceeds
to do much to her parents delight. Well almost. Her mother thinks she isover doing the exercise routine.

88 Sinister Wisdom 83 – Identity and Desire

While her parents deal with the Egyptian-Israel confrontation Toni
studies Virgil. She is a senior. One night there is a rally of the Jewish
community and she goes to it with her family. Toni meets one of the boys
who was at summer camp with her. He tells her a bunch of them arethinking of flying to Israel to work on a kibbutz, tells her Janet is in
Europe.
The next time we see Toni, she is living in Israel, a scholarshipstudent at the Hebrew University. She is on a bus to Jerusalem to look for
Janet. She has graduated from high school with honors—all because of her
unrequited love for Janet.
Janet is living with her boyfriend as a hippy: drinking and drugging.
They “adopt” Toni and become a trio. At the university Toni is learning
Hebrew. She is still in love but is about to be disillusioned. At this point
Toni’s father dies of a heart attack and her mother sends for Toni who flies
back to Montreal for the funeral and the sitting Shiva. Toni and hermother become close in their mutual sorrow and Toni’s indiscretion in
Jerusalem passes. After her father’s death, Toni learns that the secret in her
family is that her father’s sister was an epileptic and her parents felt Toni
would be too or her children.
From here on Toni’s story is like many lesbians. She learns where thegay bar is. Toni finds her first lover there. There is a breakup. She comesout to her mother. Toni gets a job working in a bookstore. She
moves out of her mother’s apartment into her own space. She is in her
freshman year at McGill University.
Gabriella Goliger is wonderful storyteller. She takes you right into
the moment. What I like about this book is that Gabriella weaves history
into Toni’s life bringing a richness to the story. You are there, back in the
70s and late 60s—in vibrant lesbian herstory.
Living Room by Dodici Azpadu (Albuquerque, NM: Nuema Books,
2010).
Reviewed by Ruth Mountaingrove
This is a novella or even a long short story. Events take place overa period of three days when our butch Carmen comes home for her
mother’s funeral a full Catholic three-day affair. Carmen has been
ostracized by her family and vice versa but she learns over a period of thethree days that some of her assumptions were not what she thought.
Carmen has a drinking problem—and a lover, Gina, herenabler. Carmen looks like her older brother and dresses like him. Her fem
Gina arrives from Albuquerque to meet Carmen’s family much toSummer 2011 89

Carmen’s chagrin. Carmen has assumptions: her mother had died a lonely
old bitter widow; not at all. Her mother’s friends loved her—they played
bingo together. They told Carmen what a fun person her mother was.
Carmen assumes that Gina would be a disaster, which was why she had
left her at home, but in those three days, Gina is accepted into Carmen’sfamily. Carmen also thought her brothers would shun her, but instead they
supported her and understood Gina.
Now to complicate things: there is Carmen’s ex-lover, whowants forgiveness. Carmen has never told Gina about Linda and that they
had a relationship of ten years. Linda is dying of cancer. Each lesbian is
now in her second Saturn return. Carmen had assumed that Linda didn’t
love her when they broke up, but Linda does love her and even helps
Carmen clean out her mother’s apartment, using what little strength she
has. When Carmen goes to Linda’ wake she meets Linda’s lover, who is amirror image of herself. They find some comfort in their mutual grief.
Gina, ever watchful, arranges for the yeo them to fly back to Albuquerquethe next day after the will is read.
Carmen’s alcoholism can be contextualized by the times, when theone of the only places you could meet another lesbian was in a bar run byother lesbians, or the Mafia—especially if you were a butch because yourappearance would set you apart in the 1940s. The underground culture
was hard to understand: the need to wear a piece of women’s clothing incase the bar was raided by the police.
When I came out in the 1970s, the time of the Women’s
Movement, we new lesbians did not understand the bar culture. We werepolitical feminist lesbians. What was there to be afraid of? Even thoughsome caution was advised in heterosexual land, butches still needed to becareful. Being a butch is not easy even in these more accepting times. The
butch is different. The butch assumes the male role, which sometimes
arouses anger in young heterosexual males to the point of gay bashing.
Living Room is told from the point of view of the butch and how shesees her life. The butch is wary, she is protective, she is loving. She is also
angry at what she perceives as non-acceptance in the heterosexual world.
In some ways this book reminded me of the Bebo Brinker series, only these
women are not young, they are in their sixties. What has happened to
Bebo? Did she leave the bars? Did she discover the Women’s Movement?
Probably not—she was a teen-ager in the 1940s. Did she die of cancer as
Linda in the Living Room does?
A blurb for Living Room suggests this book is another Nightwood,
but it is not. Djuna Barnes’s Nightwood is much darker. Read it and see
what you think.

90 Sinister Wisdom 83 – Identity and Desire

Contributors
Stephanie Barnes is an army brat for whom poetry has been one
constant. By day, she works menially for the government and on nights
and on weekends she runs her own micro-press, Tattooed Tongue Press. herwork appears in Muse Quarterly and has poems forthcoming in theanthology, Geechee to Gumbo. In 2007, she printed her first chapbook, Love
Letters Scribbled on a Concrete Wall, and a second, A Citizen of Fists isforthcoming. More of her writing can be found online at:www.IndelibleInk.jigsy.com. She lives quietly in the Atlanta area.
Sally R. Brunk (Ojibwa/Lac du Flambeau) is Bear Clan and the
youngest of eight children. A writer and poet, she centers on the bond offamily, and the Native American way of life. She was interviewed in Quiet
Mountains Essays and her work was published in Mother Warriors Voice, SAIL,
C-Literary Magazine and Moccasin Telegraph. Sally is also in the anthologies
Sharing Our Stories of Survival: Native Women Surviving Violence and Voice on the
Water: Great Lakes Native America Now. Sally has her own book of poetry
entitled The Cliffs: Summer Soundings.
Merina Canyon began writing stories when she was six years old andmuch later earned an MFA in Creative Writing. Her stories have been
published in Best Lesbian Romance 2011, Best Lesbian Love Stories 2009 and2010, Sinister Wisdom 76, and Fraglit.com. She is currently at work on a true
story from the 1970's that weaves together the revealing letters of two
young women: one in a state prison, the other in a prison of her own mind.
Their sisterhood creates a story of survival and freedom. Merina Canyon
loves cats, canyons, and creative correspondence.
Elana Dykewomon has been a cultural worker and activist since the1970s. Her seven award-winning books include the classics, Riverfinger
Women, Beyond the Pale, and 2009's Risk. Dykewomon was an editor of
Sinister Wisdom more than fifteen years ago and is delighted to see it thriving
again with new energy. She co-coordinated disabled and senior access for
the SF Dyke March; offers private writing classes and editing—www.dykewomon.org. She lives in Oakland with her partner, Susan,surrounded by friends, stirring up trouble whenever she can.
Anne Fairbrother gave up on men, and lived alone for 17 years. Then,in her fifties, she fell in love with a woman—the most intense experience ofher life. Unfortunately the relationship ended. Anne lives and teaches inSummer 2011 91

central New York State, waiting to heal; waiting for She who is coming forme.
Merry Gangemi holds an MFA in poetry and fiction from Vermont
College of Fine Arts and an MA in comparative literature from San
Francisco State University. She is the producer and host of Woman-StirredRadio, on WGDR/WGDH a community radio station on the campus of
Goddard College, and lives in Woodbury, VT with Elizabeth Hansen.
http://woman-stirred,blogspot.com.
Liz Demi Green is a graduate of Vassar and Mills College, a poetry slamchampion, a prose stylist, and a playwright. She has been featured inreadings, slams, theatrical ensembles, and workshops throughout
California. She was a 2010 Lambda Literary Foundations' Emerging
LGBT Writers’ Fellow in fiction and is at work on her first novel, The Ella
Verse. Green teaches English at Bay Area community colleges and plays
trumpet with the Brass Liberation Orchestra. www.lizdemigreen.com
Azaan Kamau After falling in love with journalism, Azaan’s goal is to
give voice to people and topics that have been muted or swept under therug. A journalist, poet, and photographer, Azaan’s work has been
published in GBF Magazine, SBC Magazine, Sapience Magazine, Women In The
Life Magazine, and others. Her photographs been published in various
media and included in The Getty Underground, part of the Getty
Museum’s annual staff exhibition. Azaan won the World Pride & Power
Organization’s Emerging Black Leader of the Decade (2008).
www.azaankamau.webs.com
www.gloverlanepress.webs.com
Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz is a writer, poet, activist, scholar, andteacher. A pioneer in women's studies, she taught the first such course at
the UC Berkeley in comparative literature, where she earned her Ph.D.
For five years, she directed the Queens College/CUNY Worker Education
Extension Center in Manhattan. She currently teaches at Queens College
in Jewish studies, history and comparative literature, and recently taught in
the Bard College Prison Initiative. Born and raised in Brooklyn, a graduateof City College/CUNY, she worked in the Harlem Civil Rights Movement
as a teenager, and continues to be active in progressive movements, antiwar, LGBT, feminism, anti-racism, labor. For several years, Melanieedited Sinister Wisdom. She was the founding director of Jews for Racial andEconomic Justice and co-founded the JFREJ radio program at WBAI (99.5
FM), Beyond the Pale <http://www.jfrej.org/radio.html>. Her books
include My Jewish Face and Other Stories; The Issue Is Power: Essays on Women,

92 Sinister Wisdom 83 – Identity and Desire

Jews, Violence, and Resistance, and, most recently, The Colors of Jews: Racial
Politics and Radical Disaporism.
Bishop C. Knight is a queer woman of color and longtime subscriber toSinister Wisdom. A DONA-trained birth doula as well as a writer, “Subject
to Anatomy” is Bishop’s first piece of published writing. She revels in the
typical challenges of her late-twenties life phase—namely, becoming more
serious about one’s profession, desiring greater intimacy from close
relationships, and delving more deeply into creative practice. Bishop
resides in the Greater Boston area and is usually wearing her favorite soft
black sweater.
Monisha Lakhotia is a native of Lafayette, Louisiana with acomplicated mix of Caucasian and Indian (South Asian). She is an English
major at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, and is working on acollection of short stories and a novel.
Jessica Mason McFadden is a stay-at-home mother and graduate ofWestern Illinois University, where she was awarded the Cordell LarnerAward in Poetry and was named Departmental Scholar. Her work has
appeared WIU’s Women's Voices Journal; and recently online, in Read These
Lips, and Breadcrumb Scabs.
Cheryl Moore is a long-time contributor to Sinister Wisdom.
Lisa L. Moore was born in Calgary, Canada and currently lives inAustin, TX, where she is a member of The Austin Project ensemble ofartists, activists, and academics, and participates in Hoa Nguyen's poetry
workshop. Moore is the author of Sister Arts: The Erotics of Lesbian Landscapes(Minnesota, 2011). She blogs at sisterarts.typepad.com.
Ruth Mountaingrove is a poet, writer and a photographer and has been
writing book reviews for the L-Word for 18 years. Previously she did thesame for WomanSpirit 1974-84 and The Blatant Image 1981-83 where she wasa co- publisher and co-editor and also with Jean Mountaingrove. For more
L-Word reviews see www.lwordmamajudy.com.
Robin níCatáin (NiDalaigh) is in the process of changing her name to
Robin ní Catáin (nee-ka-hoin), which is Irish and rhymes with "coin"). She
came out in the mid-80s when lesbian-feminism was an amazing floweringof lesbian culture (soon to splinter into finger-pointing horizontal hostility).
She spent about ten years in the middle of nowhere in Arizona, andSummer 2011 93

returned to a different world: no more women’s bookstores, music labels—
even saying the word "lesbian" makes young women flinch sometimes, but
it's made me more aware of what's left—like Sinister Wisdom and theMichigan Womyn's Music Festival—and determined to do what I can topreserve, protect and nurture what's left of that glorious flowering of
lesbian culture. She is helping Sinister Wisdom bring book reviews, and canbe reached me at: SinisterBookReviews@gmail.com
Ana Schwartz was the ultimate tomboy back in her native Canada,much to her mother’s dismay and her father’s amusement. After reading
Edgar Allan Poe one snowy morning, she decided to stop skateboarding
for a moment and put pen to paper instead. Ana currently resides in
Brooklyn with her black cat E. Anastasia Schwartz. When she is notworking her underpaid but fancy-titled day job, she enjoys baking, yoga,
running, films, and blogging for the Life section of Velvet Park Media.
Elaine Sexton is the author of two collections of poetry, Sleuth (2003) andCauseway (2008), both with New Issues Press (W Michigan U). Her recent
poems, art reviews, and essays have appeared in many journals, including
American Poetry Review, Art in America, Poetry, O! the Oprah Magazine, as well as
Bloom and the Lambda Book Report. Causeway was a finalist for the Publishing
Triangle Audre Lorde Poetry Prize. A member of the National Book
Critics Circle, Elaine teaches at the Sarah Lawrence College Writing
Institute, and the CUNY graduate writing program.
Erin Pamela Stewart is curious about everything. She lives with twocats at the head of Lake Superior in Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada.
Besides writing, she enjoys—among other things—making likenesses offriends and family out of construction paper, playing the baritone ukulele,wearing ties, and riding trains. “After Almost Breaking Up” was originallypublished in the first issue of 807: A Northwestern Ontario Literary Review.
Samn Stockwell has been widely published, and her two books, Theater ofAnimals and Recital, won the National Poetry Series and the Editor’s Prizeat Elixir Press, respectively. She has an MFA from Warren Wilson College
and has taught for many years at the Community College of Vermont. She
lives in Montpelier, VT with her wife, children, and pets.
Judith K. Witherow identifies as a writer, storyteller, and poet. Her
writing is based on survival and social issues. Her book of poetry All Things
Wild was released in 2003. Her essays have been published in numerous
scholastic collections, anthologies, magazines, and alternative periodicals.
In 1994, she won the Audre Lorde First Annual Award for Non-fiction.

94 Sinister Wisdom 83 – Identity and Desire

She was awarded “Community Builder for Decades” by WPFW (Pacifica)
Radio in 2007. Judith and her partner, Sue, have been together for
decades. Together they co-edited Sinister Wisdom 68/69 “Death, Grief andSurviving.” Judith is on Facebook; her website is www.jkwitherow.com.

Summer 2011 95

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96 Sinister Wisdom 83 – Identity and Desire

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100 Sinister Wisdom 83 – Identity and DesirePublisher: Sinister Wisdom, Inc.

Sinister Wisdom 83
Summer 2011

Sinister Wisdom
A Multicultural Lesbian
Literary & Art Journal

Editors: Merry Gangemi & Julie R. Enszer
Issue Editor: Merry Gangemi
Layout and Design: Julie R. Enszer
Book Review Editor: Robin ní Catáin
Board of Directors: Shaba Barnes, Fran Day, Susan Levinkind, Joan Nestle, Rose
Provenzano, Judith K. Witherow
7NÅKM5IVIOMZ" Susan Levinkind
Proofreaders: Merry Gangemi
Web Design: Sue Lenaerts

The oldest surviving lesbian
literary journal
publishing since 1976
Create, read, write, draw, explore, cry,fantasize, argue, celebrate, learn, teach,laugh, relate with writers and artists like
Gloria Anzaldua, Beth Brant, Crystos, Tee A.
Corinne, Alix Dobkin, Elana Dykewomon,
Ferron, Katherine Forrest, Carolyn Gage,
JEB, Terri Jewell, Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz,)Ta3QU1ZMVI3TMXÅ[b;PIZWV4QU0QVO
Phyllis Lyon, Victoria Lena Manyarrows,
Del Martin, Cherri Moraga, Adrienne Rich,
Sapphire, Barbara Smith, Jean Weisinger,
Cris Williamson, Judith K. Witherow, Merle

Special thanks to: All of the womyn who contributed work in its many forms, ourreaders, and our supporters in the journey.
Front Cover Art: “Wrinkled Egg” by Elaine Sexton;161;<-:?1;,75 founded 1976
Former editors and publishers:
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and Catherine Nicholson (1976-1981)
Michelle Cliff and Adrienne Rich (1981-1983)
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Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz (1983-1987)
Elana Dykewomon (1987-1994)
Caryatis Cardea (1991-1994)
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Margo Mercedes Rivera-Weiss (1997-2000)
Fran Day (2004-2010)
Sinister Wisdom is a multicultural, multi-class, female-born lesbian space. We seek
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to develop critical judgment, as lesbians evaluating our community and our world.
Statements made and opinions expressed in this publication do not necessarilyZMÆMK\\PM^QM_[WN \PMX]JTQ[PMZJWIZLUMUJMZ[WZMLQ\WZ[WN ;QVQ[\MZ?Q[LWU
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ZipSinister Wisdom 83

Identity and Desire
Edited by Merry Gangemi

Sinister Wisdom

Featuring Work by:
Stephanie Barnes
Sally R. Brunk
Merina Canyon
Elana Dykewomon
Anne FairbrotherLiz Demi Green
Azaan Kamau
Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz
Bishop C. Knight
Monisha Lakhotia
Sandra Langer
Cheryl Moore
Lisa L. Moore
Ana Schwartz
Elaine Sexton
Erin Pamela Stewart
Samn Stockwell
Judith K. Witherow
Summer 2011

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Identity and Desire

83