2005 - Vol. 2, Issue 3

"Liberation"

Suppose you are a woman
settled into the security of home,
family, a life you understand
and a man you've only met once

tells you your life is changing
right before his eyes.
Suppose this means
fatigue, uncertainty, losing
your beautiful long blond hair,
a riddle where complacency once lived.

Suppose you follow all the rules
of this game you never meant to play:
four months of chemicals invading
your once strong body,
followed by two weeks of steady
bombardment of ray upon ray upon ray.

After the cells crisp and die
you stand before the beveled mirror
naked and alone thinking of your

father across the ocean in a cottage
thirty minutes from Dingle,
remembering his 91st birthday,
gone now but you are here
ready to travel the distance.

"Blueprint"

She says we don't go away forever
just for a while

When we're ready
we come back with a blueprint
of the changes we want to make —

Maybe
finding love
or success
or learning how to build a bridge
or dance the tango

or do the close step to step
all the way up the arm of the Statue of Liberty

Possibilities
she says
like dead relatives she never thinks of
or felt they thought much of her
appearing at the oddest times

When the days seem like nights
and the fog settles so low
she can barely find the door
let alone the key

they turn on the light switch for her
help her settle into an easy chair
tuck grandmother's quilt up close

She's not crazy
this fifty–four–year–old woman
who tells me these things

She is a social worker
She has multiple sclerosis
She almost died
twice from breast cancer

She is not a or guru a wizard
She is a woman with a plan

"Where were you on that hot May day
in L.A. when the SWAT team blasted the roof off the SLA?"

Larry and Irene were with me
in a low rent flat in Eagle Rock
drinking can after sweaty can of ice
cold Coors toking on
tightly rolled sinsemilla
listening to Dylan and The Band
on track ten
The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down
Three pairs of eyes wide
on a barricaded prize
on East 54th Street smoking
on a nineteen inch color TV
Lobo beside us
his paws curled under
his chin
Through the split curtain
I could see smoke
fifteen miles away
A flicker of sunlight
on the old green couch
seemed a slow tempo
version of the rapid fire
dance on the screen
3722 rounds by six revolutionaries
thousands more from the other side
They didn't get Patty Hearst
I'm not even sure she was there
but the house its roof walls floors
anything living inside
no longer was

"If I tell you soldiers are raping women"

you might say
That's what soldiers do
or you might say
In war people do bad things
or you might say
Men are beasts
No
you probably wouldn't say that
but if you thought it
that's another thing

I read today of the women
of the Congo
a democratic republic

I read of soldiers raping
these women
casting shame

shame on their families
and the children
a byproduct
like the fat
from raw meat used
for cooking
these women carry

hundreds of miles
one by one
with their babies
to refugee centers

protected by UN soldiers
where at night
the women leave their babies
and crawl through the hole
in the fence
to the soldiers
to receive their gift
a banana
powdered milk for the child

"Liberation" first appeared in Zillah, December 2003.

"Blueprint" first appeared in Takahe 50 (New Zealand), Summer 2003.