What sound

You'll come out screaming
I'm assured you'll never stop
Cause anything from my womb
breathes with fires
and screams not for food or water
but just to desire

My womb.
sprung from this body of mine
you'll have no fate of silence
not with a mother who cant even be silent when she is supposed to

You see, I tried the subservient shtick
the appropriate behavior
head down
eyes wide
dying to be helpful
waiting to be told what to do

Tried that for a day or two
til my soul screamed out
Woman, fuck you
for letting them reduce you down
to their least common denominator
most desired representative of the vagina tribe

They colonized me
convinced me I could be their Pocahontas
their Sacajawea
I could make a path for them through the wilderness
of breasts and cunts and uppity women
and I was complicit

Meanwhile, they took my corn
claiming my ideas as their own
they wrapped me in a blanket tainted with a disease I could not free myself from
so that I could no longer walk
on those same streets at night
and feel safe.

They fed me the whiskey of the power they passed along to me
but the source of which I did not control

And as they colonized me,
they colonized my people
they colonized those of us who bore their children
who filled their fantasies
who threatened their monopoly on power

And they threw my tribe of feminazis a bone
they put us on the television so the cowboys could win victory over us again
and they began to define us for ourselves

And by accepting their definition
the children of our tribe thought
these explorers could be trusted
These young girls wrapped themselves in thongs and anorexia
threw away, vomited up
the food that had made their mothers fit to bear them
Wrapped themselves once again in Andrew Jackson's blankets
now sold at Louis Vitton

And the girls lost their sight because we had lost ours
too drunk on having a stake
to stand up and say No!
too excited by a media reference or a hip hop video
to refuse the stereotype
or to refuse to refuse the stereotype

Too afraid of being disruptive
out of date
or repetitive
to keep screaming on the picket lines

So, just as Jesus sweat drops of blood
as he prayer to his father
I pour rivers of blood
as I become your mother

And as you are born
I will be screaming
And as we both live
We will be screaming
And when I die and you throw my ashes to the wind
Stand you daughter by your side
and Keep screaming
So that wherever there are the warriors of our tribe
they will know what sound
Is Woman.

Touch My Face

Touch my face.
Just with your fingertips
No lips, no tongues
Just the tips of that which you use-
to explore, to experience, to devour
your world.
Not sex, just touch.
But my face explodes
I don't even know you, and I can't see your face
But I hear your voice
Feel your breath in my ear

I am drunk.
Not poetically, but seriously, really drunk
I am in a bar, on a back porch
This is not romantic
And I fight this lust for you

You are leaving...
going back in inside
The parts of me feel empty, loathing themselves
how we squandered the touch!
regret-how we only felt you before
distracted from the look of your face
come back
we'll look this time
pay attention to the face
not get so lost in the touch, that touch.

I turn to the railing
and touch the warm, soft wood
I lean on it for support
As my fingers explore, eyes find a distraction
search the sky for it
blink hard as the stars blur together
ah, that's nice- this is nice the mind coaxes
it's warm out here, and wet with mid June's humidity
it's arousing here, all by ourselves
we can do this alone
it's probably safer without him
we don't know where he's been

Fuck you she says
my vagina...she's spunky
we want him back
stop being reasonable, you always do that to us

mind ignores her, that ornery one down there
tells eyes to go back to the night sky
hands to occupy themselves, remember the smooth wood?
i wonder, is it oak or pine?
pine is indigenous to North Carolina so that would make sense....
yep definitely -shit
she won't stop aching
calling for, demanding everyone's attention
this is always how she wins, she as more nerve
come on she will whine
come on come on come on
i'm tired of it just being me and the hands
fucking hands
i know what they'll do
always the same thing
i need excitement, danger, a trip to the moon
i want to jump out of a plane, travel the world...
you know that time when we accidentally walked over the subway grate and our skirt flew up?
it should be like that...all the time.

She always does this, that cunt
if it was up to her,
that little bit of pride,
dignity that we wrapped up and put in the fridge,
under the bed
in our back pocket for later
for someone special...
it would be gone

He might not come back...ever
We sure aren't going after him
have some respect for yourself
the screen door creaks
god, i love that sound
the other sounds don't fade
they evaporate
they are sucked out
like he was a vacuum or a blackhole
none of my voices can bear to speak
We can't see him
recognize just the feeling of him in the night
everyone shuts up

The eyes stop wandering
hand stops stroking
We see the face, his face
Ah that is nice, there is a beard
the neck is very excited
yes please, say breasts, collarbones

The body shivers, stands on end, skin leading the way
like a foot
that was asleep but now must stand and walk
the whole of her feels that way-
in anxious pain
The face still numb a little from the whiskey
longs for the fingertips to arouse it again

She's throbbing now
can feel her own heartbeat below her waist
following the blood as it rushes, rushes
to the spot that can't wait
that is hungry
starving
for him
she is terrified he can see the throbbing
can sense the pulsing
at the very least, he must hear her heart

say something mouth
nothing.

the fingertips touch the face
right above the jaw
ah-cheeks say
The lips reach her lips
the tongue, her tongue
her hands remain on the wood
realize it doesn't matter what kind it is
they long to touch him
to experience his hair, neck, shoulders
but here they are stuck

the tongues move together
the beard caresses her chin
oh yes
the neck ignites
i knew that would be nice, the neck says
the body gives way in utter agreement
the hand catches the body as the knees forget to support
fortunately he is strong enough
and her arms draw around his shoulders

this is good, everyone agrees
the face still a little numb
the lips tingle awake
they dissolve into each other
drip off
hanging on only by lips and tongues
no longer mind, cheeks, hands, eyes, vagina
no longer him, her
overwhelmed
and one
with the wave that has swept them under
they are surrendered, dissolved into one

still she-
she can feel this
touch my face, she says

On trying to become poet.

I haven't written on here in sometime, but I promise to get better about that. This blogging thing is even newer for me than some other forms of expression...I think so many of us have this self doubt that our ideas really matter that much, are really expert enough. For years I even found it too egotistical to keep a journal. Near the end of high school, I finally started writing in one, but it wasn't until halfway through college that the words I wrote were my own. Up until then, I merely wrote quotes I liked, or half-thoughts.

Even when I first began writing, the prose didn't fit me. I found I was not very good at being brief but I was too busy to write it all out. Still, I found a lot of relief writing my responses to lines I had heard here and there in movies, from friends, and in songs. The first time my heart was broken, I didn't realize how upset I was until this Ani Difranco song Dilate came on in my car and I sat there and sobbed. I am not a crier but for the first time, I refused to repress myself and I didn't feel guilty for being upset. I went home and I wrote out the words to the song. Then I made myself journal about how each part had triggered something about this heartbreak I was feeling and eventually, I wrote about how I planned to grow from my pain.

Still, it was not until I began writing poetry that I really got great use out of this journaling thing that I was trying. The first poem I ever wrote was my senior year of college. I was trying to expand myself. I had spent much of college with the same group of people and I wanted to try and develop this artistic side of myself. This side that I had somehow convinced myself I wasn't allowed to have.

Wake Forest (where I went to undergraduate) was having an erotic poetry slam. This was incredibly brave for Wake. I thought to myself, I can do this. I will write a poem and I will read it out loud. I was in this time where I was trying to think more about what I believed about sex and eroticism. I was acting in the Vagina Monologues. Also, a professor, Eric Watts (if you go to Carolina take him, he could change your life) had mentioned that we no longer understood erotic love as a culture, that we associated it too much with erotica. Anyway, so I had been thinking about that for a few weeks and I wrote "Touch My Face."

I was so nervous. I wore my favorite coat, the green one that is plaid that I bought in NYC. It was hot as hell in the campus coffee shop but I kept the coat on. After I read, these two frat guys came up to me and told me they really loved it, that was bizarre but great because I think they so much embodied what I was afraid of that night. That poem appears following this post.

When I moved to DC, I regularly attended this open mic at Busboys and Poets. Everytime I said next time I would bring my book and I would read. Everytime I forgot it. When I moved back to the District for the summer I said I would read before the summer ended. Miraculously, I found excuses not to go to the open mic or I forgot my journal. The poets were beautiful. Their rhthyms were not all consistent, something you often find in spoken word, but really felt organic to their beings. Their work varied as well. I am still learning that you don't have to consider youself good to put your shit out there. You do however need to be real with yourself and that makes it really hard to read or write in a public space. Because the walls come down. My friend Reagan and I were talking about writing tonight and he noted how we think we are this one identity and then we are surprised when what we put on paper is different from that. This poetry stuff has shown me just how constructed our day to day identities can be, how sometimes we are constantly unconsciously selecting from our list of identities as we perform ourselves.

My poetry is raw, passionate, and a little vulnerable. It is less explicite than I expected from myself. But what are our expectations of ourselves anyway other than what we think we should be to fit into others' views of us? The second poem I am posting tonight I read at the open mic last week at Wake Forest. I initially just went to listen but I took my book with me as a way of repenting for my past sins. I was terrified again, a terror that certainly did not dissipate when several friends showed up. I had hoped to be annonymous and had told no one that I might read. The majority of my friends do not even know I write poetry. I think it might be that we want most to maintain our well-contructed images for our friends, maybe only more so for our former lovers.

So here goes, I have several other poems and I love all of them. But, it is aprocess for me to dismantle my walls. I like the dillusion that people think I am a badass so it is hard for me to be vulnerable. Be careful with me.

Criticism does not equal misogynism

Attention Carly Fiorina, John McCain camp, GOP at large: Just because democrats criticize Sarah Palin does not mean they are woman haters. Just because they are not willing to overlook her years of (not) experience and her far-to-the-right-yet-pretending-to-be-libertarian political persona, doe not mean that Democrats do not want a woman in the White House. What it does mean is that they care enough about this country to question those presented as its possible leaders. It means that they value the premise of a fair fight enough to hold McCain to the indellible standards for public office which he himself has set forwards. Finally, it means they value women highly enough not to patronize us by granting us a woman on the ticket.

Because that is exactly what Palin is: a gift. Despite the fact that she is currently being painted as the fruits of our labor, there is very little laborous about her presence on the Republican ticket. The fact that the party who has brought us some of the most established and perpetual criticism of affirmative action is now bringing us only the second woman to appear on a presidential ticket is both shocking and revealing. Shocking because Sarah Palin is a clear example of the colloquial understanding affirmative action and every way the policy has failed. She is a wildly innapropriate, if not completly incapable filler for a spot that might traditionally gone to a nice white male. At the same time, Palin's selection is particularly revealing of the opinions the party has always held of the affirmative action policy: less skilled and deserving minority takes the place of intelligent, hardworking, deserving white man and other intelligent deserving white men prepare to take up the slack or, in this narrative's Disney version, compassionately guide the women through the strange new world of education, corporate america, world leadership, (fill in the blank.)

The most offensive thing about Fiorina et al.'s blowing the sexist whistle is that it implies Palin can't take it. It implies that she needs protecting, and that she can't stand up with her Maverick running mate and defend herself. This just seems silly considering the women hunts bear or moose or whatever the hell else they let you shoot in Alaska. But it isn't just silly.

When I was growing up, I was the oldest by a good bit. I had a sister 6 years younger and a brother 11 years younger. I grew up with a relative repulsion to things that represented girlhood, partly because I found them unimaginitive and partly because I was friends with a lot of boys and I wanted to prove that I could hang. Anyone who was once a child knows that they can be cruel and that any weakness is one's armor leaves you vulnerable to attack. I was afraid that if I ever showed them that I was hurt, or that I couldn't spit and curse and sass along with the best of them, I would always be fighting my way back in.

There was a particular family I spent a lot of time with growing up: The Hortons. I am still very close to them and I am grateful for the impact they had on my life. It is the Horton family that I think of when I see the responses to Sarah Palin's critics by the McCain campaign. The Horton's had this thing called a "cut jar." The cut jar was a punishment technique instituted by Mr. and Mrs. Horton to make their 3 boys maintain at least a degree of civility at the dinner table. The rules were quite simple: verbally cut (ie: embarass, burn, insult) another occupant at the dinner table and you had to put money in the cut jar. The amount would vary, sometimes depending on the nature of the cut, usually starting at 25 cents. Often the cost of each cut would rise incrementally throughout the night as the boys became more unruly. It was at these spaghetti dinners that I learned that some cuts, in fact a lot of cuts, are worth the price.

I loved having dinner at the Horton's. My parents were not neccessarily strict and I enjoyed a degree of free speech in my house, but my brother and sister did not provide an adequate enough challenge for my craft. Also, though they loved me unconditionally, The Hortons did not have to love me, especially not the boys. Everytime I really came up with a zinger, I felt my stock rise. For every 25 cents, 50 cents, or dollar that I put in that jar, I became that much further towards establishing myself as a force to be reckoned with. And everytime someone verbally slapped me across the face and I didn't react, I felt that much closer to invincible.

I am sure that these dinners scarred me for life. That they taught me to close me self off to others' attacks on me and to go first to innappropriate humor when seeking refuge from awkward social situations in the future. However, I am willing to take that baggage because these dinners really taught me to stand up for myself. They taught me not to be intimidated and not to take other peoples' criticisms too seriously.

Maybe McCain's camp needs to let Palin come to dinner. If she is such a maverick let her stand up for herself.