lineage
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 —
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.
an ode in recipes ii
thank you thank you to the friends and strangers who put yesterday’s visits at 69. The most number of visits this Radical Muffin has had in a day so far. So – in appreciation, here is the second cut and paste poem of search terms that led folks here. Again, I am thrilled that all of these, somehow, are true of this site:
temporary kitchen equipment and garbanzos in glass jars
because recipes are poems are recipes
muffin poems
naughty muffin mush
muffin steamed history
in an iron skillet pineapple upsidedown cake
a delicious pineapple upside cake recipe, but how to pick thyme when
this junk food generation at the twin towers and pineapple upside down cake burned
and the percentage of commercials are unhealthy
fast food verses and children’s obesity.
subway’s exploitation of obese children
aids in the ass
there’s purple bubbles, and
no pants in public
no pants day
feminist sexual image lesbian
apron
fuschia potato masher
what does a turnip look like?
authentic tibetan kitchen equipment and a puttering muffin
with recipe winter roots
silver cardamom
cortelyou dumplings momo
hundred year old pancake batter
the priest “never had an orgasm”
since she was a young nun in monastery, having
lesbian phone sex
lesbian lust
after the butterfly effect kimono seduction
later there were possessed nuns tattoos
mushrooms tattoo, and a
pineapple upside down cake recipe 50’s
why pineapple upside down cake was popular
coconut pineapple cake vegan cake
paper bag goat over subway grates upside down pineapple cake baked in muff
art
pineapple upside down cake
opposite pineapple cake
vegan chocolate muffin
chia muffin vegan recipe
muffin poem for children
poem about vegetarianism
i always leave the crust poem
we are all the human race
and for my sister girl sister, a new video:
ode in recipes
WordPress, the service hosting this blog, records the search terms that some person somewhere entered that churned up this blog from all the zillions of sites on the web. I think the most interesting thing is it is all true somehow, and if it wasn’t here explicitly before it is now. From what has led them here, an ode to e-seekers:
nice mash potatoes, turnip vegan
squash radical
kitchen witchery
Purslane what does it look like
BEING HYPOCRITE IN THIS CIVILIZED WORLD
cauliflower root soup
chasteberry tattoos of mushrooms bluefoot chantrelles
“tofu scramble“
tofu scramble
clementine and lemon muffins
tofu scramble salsa
Tofu scrambles and omelet recipes
muffin films women naughty
sequins slung
mushroom blue foot 2
Indian muffin market
Betsey Johnson tagline
washington dc edible silver ball candies
peanut butter kiss cookies not flat
queer femme girls
simmering beets
cute mushrooms
Asian children: cute
old people who drink too much
chia pet herb and doctored tomato soup
SPUD DESERT RECIPES
mini greens
condensed milk, rosewater, cardamom
day by day poetry
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
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
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
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
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
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
