Next to Godliness

Q. Are you able to take showers and baths by yourself?
A. I can't take a shower by myself, I mean, I can go in there, but I won't come clean.

Last Notification

As though Newsweek will never ask
me to subscribe again and I will be left
pitiful and crying on my living room floor
with nothing authoritative to read and
pictures of Hillary and Barack and John
will be absent from my coffee table that
is homemade and already leaning slightly
to one side but still my life will have no
color or substance or direction which will
lead me to substance abuse and neglect
of my children.

We’ve been down this road before.

You know where to find me.
It’s the house behind the chipped blue
mailbox that no one has bothered
to affix a name or number to.

Writers' Meeting!

Friday, March 7, 4:00 p.m. at The Chicory Cafe.

Something Like That

Q. What did she die from?
A. She was assassinated.
Q. Related to your problems?
A. No, no, no, independently.
Q. How did that happen?
A. I don't know.
Q. Well, was she mugged?
A. She was involved with the wrong people or something like that.

My Six-Word Memoir

No, thanks. I've had enough today.

Inherent?

Well, we had a great time in Sally's class today. We rocked. We spent more than half the class discussing Heyward's ideas about sexual mutuality, whether or not it can even exist in heterosexual relationships. Everyone was talking at once. It was great fun. I guess you could say the sexual energy was unbound. Which brings me around to a topic we just barely touched, the idea of where creativity comes from, whether creativity is inherently sexual. Think about that, now. I suppose Audre Lourde might say yes. And I'll repeat this one quote from Heyward, too:

Sexuality is expressed not only between lovers in personal relationship, but also in the work of an artist who loves her painting or her poetry, a father who loves his children, a revolutionary who loves her people.

And in answer to that question a fellow writer asked me, is that class you're taking Women & Spirituality or Women & Sexuality, the answer is yes. And yes, I think a class on Men & Spirituality/Sexuality is warranted, too, and all the natural evolutions thereof.

At Risk of Beloved

(No, not done. I'm working at the rate of about 1 stanza every couple months on this one.)

We tongue new names,
finger frailty, maim
Parnassian wings.

Rags stream behind
my slice of the eye.

A fact field of poppies
is entirely blind.

Good Stuff

And here's Talia, again, dang: BFR.

Winter Commentary

And what I think about winter at this moment: Musical. I think I'm going to ask Chris & Kennedy's Kitchen to perform this little piece.

Thinking About Clover

I'm still brainstorming for Monday. You'll probably have to endure this all weekend long, or better yet, just avoid this blog.

Carter Heyward, whose theory text "Sexuality, Love, and Justice" I'm exploring below, uses these words to describe herself: lesbian feminist Christian priest and teacher. Here's a couple more quotes I think are relevant to what she has to say and sure to generate discussion.

Heterosexism is a social structure pervasive in our culture and worthy only of being undone.

In our present social order, mutual sexual relationships are available largely in same-sex relationships.

The lesbian relationship, as I experience it, may be mutual, and as such may offer a glimpse into a way of being in the world that is as instructive for women and men in relation as for women and women and men and men. To be a lesbian is, for me, a way--the best way for me -- of being a lover.

Oh, it's going to be a fun class! I'm really interested in exploring this mutuality idea, relationships with less emphasis on the power scheme. We haven't really used the poetry book assigned for the class, Claiming the Spirit Within, but I've sifted through it looking for something that might fit the theme. I've come up with this, a poem I love just for its simple, beautiful lines, the way it does what it does:

Every Fact is a Field

by Elizabeth Seydel Morgan

In the language of science, every fact is a field. -- Jacob Bronowski

It is summer on your father's farm,
South Georgia, 1956.
We are teenaged girls.

Our bare legs straddle the bare backs
of palomino quarter horses
who're muzzling and munching clover,
the reins loose on their golden necks.

The clover is blooming, a purple field
sloping away from this knoll
to a dark stand of pines
that hides half the sun.

We're sharing a stolen cigarette,
feeling horsewarmth against our thighs,
the June air cooling on our moist skin.

We talk so long the sky draws up
the clover's color to its own field.

The horses snort, then shift
Your leg touches mine as we watch in silence
the black pines rise,
pulling this land up and over,
taking us backward into night.

Without a word we rein our horses
and turn their heads, mine left, yours right.

The evening is a fact.
I am still here in its field.

(published in Claiming the Spirit Within, ed. Marilyn Sewell, Boston: Beacon Press, 1996).