lineage
20 Sep 2009 1 Comment
in narrative, poems Tags: coffee, kitchen, lineage, mothers, poetry
i have become my mother and her mother before her
savoring the peace & chatter of our own minds
with a cigarette and cup of coffee at the kitchen table
even a bad cup of coffee or cold
a cup of anything, really
for my grandmother, in the mornings sometimes
a diet coke
i don’t go there very often
and maybe, maybe
the company & chatter of someone we love,
who opens our hearts, makes us feel closer to our own souls
usually, children or lovers or friends who might as well be
then we’ll hear you, clarion
and tell our stories truly
and perhaps make you pancakes
or something else fried; in olive oil, bacon fat or butter by generation
to salve it all
and feed these souls, now revealed
hungry
— the play —
30 Aug 2009 Leave a Comment
in narrative, poems Tags: childhood, poetry, queer, theater
the radical muffin is working on a new zine of poems and recipes, due out at the end of September. Here is a preview:
i think i was 5 when my mom took me to see the play at the local community college.
the actors and the actress ran across the stage in college-people
clothes: jeans and t-shirts
they were running in timed bursts, crossing the stage alone then slightly
after someone else had started dashing from across the opposite end of the
stage then on an angle at the same time as another.
they were all acting that they were late to start the show and couldn’t find
their wig-shoes-props-pants even and
the audience is here they stage-said to each other hurry hurry hurry
they were acting about what they’d be doing if they were not already
acting to show the kids in the audience—my mom said this particular
production was for kids—that later they would be acting
it would all be make-believe
we had an agreement, all of us, to engage in a temporary fabrication of truth
and the actress, she sat on an empty stage in dim purple light on a bench
with a fine blue scrim hanging across half the stage, her behind it,
pretending to hold a mirror, pretending to comb her hair
talking about her beautiful purple hair
how she loved it, how she was so
glad of it, born with it, purple hair that was really waist length, wavy and brown
she cried out, oh! please God!
please! don’t ever let me be normal!
and i could not speak
she took my breath.
she seemed so powerful, to say she had purple hair and now it is true
and she really touched her real hair
stroked it and i could feel how soft it was and she didn’t want to be normal
i loved her with my whole fucking 5 year-old high femme girl-child heart.
and my heart pounded fast for her and i was afraid that it could not be true
for us
gorgeous reveling freak
today, reveling, I am paying homage to Audrey Hepburn
Breakfast at Tiffany’s in motorcycle boots
vintage black velvet minidress with a flat satin bow just up-under the
pointy tits
hair frenchly twisted, messy & red; big silver hoop earrings, big black sunglasses
despite the dude who waggled his naked cock at me on 14th street, i am grinning big and feeling hot
on such dress-up days, it is important to grin especially brightly at girl-children
wearing the fashion explosions of their own orchestration
their young, fierce force of will apparent
those girls dangle back and turn to look look look as their moms keep hold
of their small hands
smile vastly, generously, in-depth
yeah—it’ll be okay, girl. we just have to be each other’s superheroes.
day by day poetry
27 Jan 2008 Leave a Comment
in poems Tags: aids, alice walker, feminism, hilary clinton, hummingbird, journaling, queer, race politics, radical muffins love pleasure, sexuality
i keep a Skybright Studio canvas pad propped up on the table against the world map. It has a hot pink cover with a distant lighthouse under a full moon seen through sparse trees rendered in white lines and smudges; it is 16 x 20 inches. I write impulsive poems on it in sharpie marker. They often come from bits of conversation. It started in the fall sometime, and it is now full. Below is part of the resulting poem, annotated with links. Visually, it is beautiful on the pad, haiku format one to each sheet, but a ribbon like that would make the blog space too long so the lines are longer here:
she would ask, did you have one big love? What does love mean to you now?
she was radicalized around ideas of nation states & nationalism in high school English Lit class where she learned
America is a constructed country
American, an invented identity
with myths & traditions made in patchwork & whole cloth
the latest experiment
i get paid what i got paid in dc but now i live in new york.
i’m choking on it.
he was angry, when she asked if he had slept with a prostitute
after he said he had lived next door to a brothel.
residual feelings, she called them; like semi-sticky dust leftovers of love
“writing is like marriage—one should not commit one’s self until one is amazed at one’s luck”
even our complex, artful, deranged & joyful sexuality seems hopeless in the maw of this poverty, war & isolation
a fundamental human challenge
you are here; you are an agent of change; you are the butterfly effect
a flock of greckles in your face; a hawk circling far away
a pink plastic flamingo, an origami piece crane, and a hummingbird—
all in the same sky
i’ve only slept with 9 people, she said.
But how do i count the 6 dyke orgy in high school, or
that play-party where 20 people fucked the prince
while me & another femme pet him—how do i count that? She took the prince home the next night.
i count that
well, dunk me in buttermilk & call me a biscuit—
you’ve got grits, kid.
i like being part of a grand history. like she said: i cross the police line &
join the past 2 decades of AIDS activists
“writing saved me from the sin & inconvenience of violence”
quick curried peanut sauce for many veggies
03 Jan 2008 Leave a Comment
in artichoke, broccoli, eggplant, garlic, poems, potatoes, recipes, string beans, vegan, vegetarian Tags: cooking, cooking for one, curry, peanut butter, sauce, weeknight dinner
chop one medium yellow sweet onion, and smash, peel, and mince a few cloves of garlic. Peel and mince a half inch of fresh ginger.
sauté the onions and garlic in olive oil until the onions are translucent. Stir in the ginger along with a teaspoon of curry powder and a pinch of cayenne pepper. Stir in about three teaspoons of sesame oil and three tablespoons of Braggs or tamari sauce.
glop in a cup of peanut butter, and whisk in boiling hot water in a thin stream to bring the mixture to a saucey consistency.
prepare the veggies of your choice: fairy tale eggplant sliced in half and roasted; purple potatoes halved, par boiled and fried; steamed baby artichokes; bell pepper and broccoli sauté; string beans. What’s in season?
happy summer solstice
22 Jun 2007 1 Comment
in narrative, poems Tags: mushrooms
bluefoot, oyster, lbms, enoki, chantrelles, and a big, beautiful, and orange mushroom
here is what i know i want:
a room that is quiet
with good light, and
living green growing plants
and generous dinners with people i love
when we drink too much wine, laughing
with the absurdity of living and the pain of bearing witness to each other & these circumstances
eat well tonight- this day has been the longest in the year.
i am eating leftover stir fried rice (my new favorite vehicle for every summer veggie – recipe forthcoming) stirred into squash soup with a slice of sour dough bread, fried in the skillet.
but here is another way to use any and every veggie…
quiet for a young nun
27 Feb 2007 18 Comments
New York Times World Briefing:
Romania: Prison for Priest and Nuns in Exorcism Death: A court sentenced an Orthodox priest, Daniel Petre Corogeanu, left, to 14 years in prison for killing a 23-year-old nun in a crucifixion exorcism ritual in an isolated monastery in northeastern Tanacu in 2005. The nun, Maricia Irina Cornici, who was said to suffer from schizophrenia, died after spending three days chained to a makeshift cross with no food or water as the priest and nuns prayed to chase out evil spirits they believed possessed her. Prosecutors had sought a life sentence for Father Corogeanu. The four nuns arrested with him were sentenced to terms of five and eight years.
crucifixion exorcism
torture towards a transformation or erasure
isolation is dangerous
no sentence shifts the menace of blind faith
and another woman is dead.
Imagine the murmur through the so-called civilized world: “In this day & age?”
Yes, in this day and age, when widows are expected to crawl into the fires of their husband’s funeral pyres, and orphaned children are accused of witchcraft so they can be banished from the impoverished homes of their extended families in socially acceptable ways.
Closer to home – my college girlfriend’s sister, entrapped by her family and hauled up to the altar by her armpits. The church elders exorcising her lesbianism and shaming her entire family before the whole congregation.
I wonder if they would have crucified Maricia if she had been a man or if her mind would have remained steady had she not been born a woman. Maybe her collapse would have taken a different form: she thought the devil was talking to her – naming her “sinful” – and refused to drink their holy water.
Then I wonder – maybe she drove herself crazy living as a nun in northeastern Tanacu. Maybe she fell in love with Mother Superior. Maybe her parents abused her then sent her to be a nun. Maybe she shattered to save some part of herself. Maybe her experience of schizophrenia terrified her. Maybe God was talking to her.
Frightening – to expect happenings like this. I will light candles for you, Maricia. I hope you are at peace.
**
Today’s post-script: one more reason why our government appears such a hypocrite in its efforts to spread peace, democracy, and well-being.
January 27, 2007
14 Feb 2007 Leave a Comment
we don’t want to live in fear; we don’t want anyone anywhere in the world to live in fear
The residents of the High Femme House for Wayward Women took the Greyhound to DC to bear witness to the latest anti-war rally (specials running between NYC & DC make Greyhound as cheap as the Chinatown bus. I have a masochistic fondness for the Chinatown bus experience, but Port Authority is an indoor waiting space). I offer you a poem in images:
skeleton drum beat; death marched in many forms
the twin towers are covered in falling soldiers
our elders came. as gaurdians
and angry dancing flowers
and truth speakers.
stop this racist war
the rapture is not an exit strategy
flawed rhetoric; warped ideology
send no more targets to Iraq
the mask of unbearable witnessing
hope for peace
arms are for hugging
i made the apple turnovers described below for our trip & adventure.
roe v. wade
22 Jan 2007 Leave a Comment
Today, 34 years ago, the US Supreme Court agreed to put the force of the State behind a woman’s right to choose to end a pregnancy and not – at that time or perhaps ever – become a mother. Of course, in our current political and cultural climate, Roe and all the rights and freedoms it has come to represent are withering .
But I am thinking of the women whose stories were the current carrying Roe through the courts. When the case first entered the Texas legal system in 1973, women came to the hearings and spoke out about how criminalizing abortion hurt them. They lined the backs of the courtrooms; they held signs. They were dead serious. It was their reality that swayed the lower court judges to tackle one of the most taboo yet politicized subjects in our sad, strained little country.
It’s inspiration to share our own complicated realities.
Check out some of the other blogs on choice today, visit www.bushvchoice.com to see all the bloggers who participated in Blog for Choice day.
The poem below isn’t about abortion per se, but it is about a woman’s silence and the entrapment of faux choices. My friend Katie gave me the stories so love to her and all of us who are timid but rushing beyond narrow and fighting hard anyway.
- the revelation -
the young woman at the counter of the corner deli near her office
lives in new york and advocates for reproductive rights, but she’s from a small town
her friend from high school
(i remember she had that thick, long, dark hair; i remember she was smarter than me in history, smarter than anyone in that class (maybe i loved her))
she got married
to this man who spends hours on the internet buying plastic star wars figurines that he will not allow his two young sons to touch, spiraling them into debt
and it’s mcdonalds most nights
and the kids are getting fatter
she says she is tired all the time; she had wanted to go back to school
she has never had an orgasm
her mother told her, “it is your duty to lie down with your husband even if it sickens you”
she is a good christian woman
she had saved herself for marriage
her husband bought his 24th yoda yesterday and put it on the shelf, wiped the plastic cover with his sleeve
(i saw her over the holidays, you know – they both still believe that he is entitled to make unilaterally all major household decisions, that the natural structure of things gives him all the power and that this system is in all participants’ best interest.)
the young woman at the counter cups her espresso & inhales the daily morning survivor’s guilt
bites into her bagel like redemption
and she savors her own choices & happenstance opportunities with bitter gratitude
garlick bread
16 Jan 2007 5 Comments
in bread, poems, recipes, vegetarian Tags: butter, date night, gay, peoria, romance, wine
my friend matthew (we have the same birthday but he’s 5 years older)
he used to cut my hair in the late afternoon kitchen, gringy yellow like those 70s men’s dress slacks (flat fly, low waist) from the village thrift
he would say soooo, what you’re telling me is
(purring)
what you want is
ooo, looky a hot boy from the back
but!
ooo, looky, a hot girly dyke from the front,
plus audrey hepburn
he would say—you can either cut hair or you cannot
the only reason to go to beauty school is to learn how to hold the damn scissors and comb in one hand
this is his recipe for garlic bread, or rather here’s the email he sent me when i asked for it:
hello slishalicious:
i am not sure this is in time as i have not checked my email lately, but i hope it helps “pave the way” for tastier things…here’s my recipe for garlic bread…….
1 nice loaf of French bread (i prefer a good combination of length and width as opposed to the traditional long and thin) and 1 loaf is not always enough for 2 people
garlic chopped to taste (the more the better i say) chopped/pressed/diced/or beaten into submission
1 stick of real butter per loaf (nothing faaat-free about this decadent treat) put out ahead of time to soften
4 or 5 pinches of paprika
bottle of wine that goes w/the planned meal
the tasty boi or gurl (depending on preference or both if you wish) perched on a stool
pre-heat oven to 350 degrees’ pour glass of wine and swirl the bouquet on your tongue w/the gurl on the stool
whip the butter ‘til creamy
add garlic
more wine
stir in paprika
taste butter and add more garlic or paprika- to taste
more wine and kisses, mild fondling is not inappropriate here
slice bread into desired size pieces but do not cut all the way through,
leave a little crust to hold it all together
butter both sides of the pieces (very important for that dripping with goodness taste)
wrap in foil and put in oven for 10 minutes
use the 10 minutes to open another bottle of wine for dinner (as surely you will need another by now) and “stir” up some pleasant sensations in the boi
after 10 minutes open the foil and bake for another 3 minutes to ensure a crispy crust and a moist center….
remove from oven and enjoy…
let me know how dinner went.
love always….matthew
serve with puttenaio, duh.
