Mother
My hand drawn happy faces on our napkins
would fade as their smiles wiped your tears,
late at night while you packed peanut butter
& jelly sandwiches, in my school lunch box.
Older I have grown but your tears renew
each day the Black Dog maniacally persists,
ripping to shreds the last of my fragile youth,
and despite his presence, I soothe you to sleep.
The ageless stray mutt menace leads recklessly,
so in the neon-lit room, limp you now lay on a bed.
I gulp bile back as the suction pump whirs inside you,
your gaze cast downward, into our tightly held hands.
Mother, when I see that look in your eyes,
I know that you're my only child.
Saturday, November 27, 2010
Peristasis poem
Home
She slammed the door.
On picture day, she slammed the door in my face.
I had spent all morning picking a dress, but she slammed the door.
She grimaced at my unruly hair, even though I wore a pretty yellow dress I spent a whole morning choosing for picture day.
I felt cold.
She slammed the door in my face, her big camera hanging
from her neck.
The camera hung from her neck and I felt cold, but she didn’t take my picture, and just slammed the door in my face.
She slammed the door in my face.
“Mixed children make bad school photos,” she shrieked sharply.
I whimpered as she slammed the door in my mixed face, sorry I’d make bad photos.
Through tearful eyes I watch straight-haired 3rd grade classmates smile, shortly after she slammed the door in my face.
She slammed the door in my face.
“Not Black or White: no picture for you!” she repeats.
Neither White nor Black, I hear “go back where you come from,”
before she slammed the door in my face.
She slammed the door.
On picture day, she slammed the door in my face.
I had spent all morning picking a dress, but she slammed the door.
She grimaced at my unruly hair, even though I wore a pretty yellow dress I spent a whole morning choosing for picture day.
I felt cold.
She slammed the door in my face, her big camera hanging
from her neck.
The camera hung from her neck and I felt cold, but she didn’t take my picture, and just slammed the door in my face.
She slammed the door in my face.
“Mixed children make bad school photos,” she shrieked sharply.
I whimpered as she slammed the door in my mixed face, sorry I’d make bad photos.
Through tearful eyes I watch straight-haired 3rd grade classmates smile, shortly after she slammed the door in my face.
She slammed the door in my face.
“Not Black or White: no picture for you!” she repeats.
Neither White nor Black, I hear “go back where you come from,”
before she slammed the door in my face.
Monday, November 1, 2010
Re-Vision of the “Concept, Form, Voice” piece!
Hello folks-- wow it's been two weeks of mid-term madness!
I have now resurfaced, and have managed to re-vision one of my pieces, which still felt a little incomplete when I last read it. I hope this semi-breakthrough makes up for my lack of blogging these past two weeks.
If you're reading this you've most likely also made it through, and I warmly congratulate you! Leave it in the comments section, and don't forget to take care.
Pure love to all,
A.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Here it goes!
Re-Vision of the “Concept, Form, Voice” assignment.
Unctuous foamy cream slowly being lathered on by an “attractive” (read barely clothed and outrageously skinny) made-up woman, splashing hot water, and an expensive five blade razor. Those are the basic elements typically being advertised to women by marketers selling the work (note that I deliberately use the more negatively connotated word “work”, and I’ll come back to the reasons behind this at a later point) of leg shaving. However, I have recently come to view with a brand new set of lenses, the conscious gender role performance that is the action of removing hair off one’s legs.
It all started when I was approached by a 20-something man I didn’t know, half way through my usual workout at the O’Keefe Fitness center on campus. In loose silver shorts with a hefty tuft of chest hair protruding from his overly revealing v-neck muscle shirt, he walks up to me and says
“If you move your feet like this while lifting the weights, you’ll get a lot more out of your training.” Resenting this unrequested “expert’s help” interruption, I took my earphones off to politely decline further interaction, but before I even had a chance to say anything, he had already bent down and reached for my legs. As his hand briefly came in contact with my lower calf, he exclaimed “Holy shit! Your legs are hairy!”
Uncertain that I had heard correctly, I asked him to repeat. As his statement sunk in a second time, I shrugged with indifference, and then found myself responding with a defiant “Well, so are yours."
“It’s not the same: I’m a guy, and I’m supposed to have hairy legs. For a chick, it’s sick-looking and not right,” he replied. Not missing a beat, I fired back “And why not?! I have killer legs, and hair naturally grows there just like it does on a man.”
“Women are supposed to shave, so they look hot and smooth, and can be pretty enough to find a boyfriend or a husband. I’d never shag a girl if her legs weren’t taken care of,” he arrogantly added.
WOAH!
“Who the hell do you think you are, to believe you have the right to judge, police, and govern women’s bodies like that?!” I shouted, attracting the curious glances of all nine other people in the gym.
“Well—”
Cutting him right off, I made it clear he had chosen to get his macho on with the wrong girl, if he expected me to sit back and nod in agreement with his offensive bullshit. This, of course, led him to abruptly exit the premises calling out “Crazy bitch,” leaving me alone to think about all this, and pretty blue in the face.
A few months ago, as the summer sun slowly shied away, it was mostly laziness that got the best of the little leg shaving ambition I ever possessed. I’ve always been a lazy winter leg shaver—that’s nothing new. But as September progressed, shame and guilt-free for the first time ever, I began embracing the idea of hairy legs, because it meant less time in the shower and more time for breakfast part two, or morning writing. And this, year-long (here I come, Spring booty skirts!) However, when this guy bent down for my legs to get personal, he head-butted pretty hard into the political.
The systematic come and go of the blade as it glides from ankle to thigh seems fairly insignificant in itself, and so does applying hair removal cream or strips. Although, when you stop to think of it, this simple action is profoundly ingrained in our society’s standards of female “beauty,” which dictate that only hair-free legs can be beautiful. And who’d possibly want be viewed as other than proper and attractive, right?
On my way home from school later in that afternoon, I pondered “Why?” “Why did I ever bother to shave my legs in the first place, if it always felt like such a chore?” Did I ever really believe only leg hair-free women are beautiful? Or is he right, and I’m in a hairy denial process because I will indeed be single my whole life?
It’s while waiting to cross the street at a red light, that I remembered my delight (which now only seems like a really alien feeling to have in the context) at age 12, when I shaved for the first time. Mama had bought me a pink two-blade Bic razor, and to my father and brothers’ despair, I had occupied the only bathroom in our four bedroom house for a whole hour.
After that first time, I was never able to muster up the feeling of excitement again. But despite my intense boredom-related emotions, every few days for the next seven years, I’d prop myself up on the bathroom sink, and reduced to invisibleness any hair on my legs. Seven years…That’s a really long time to engage in an action that isn’t really thought out past the “every other girl does it, I might as well too” point.
The little pedestrian guy lights up, and as I cross the street I’m brought back to the language specification I made earlier. I used the word “work” rather than something neutral like “task” to make a distinction between shaving solely out of personal preference for the short-lasting smoothness; and shaving out of fear of being judged as unattractive and/or of being rejected by partners or friends.
And since in my experience “work” typically defines something most people “do” not so much for their personal enjoyment, but more in order to gain something (money, usually, but social approval in this case), I try to mark the two different intentions I think can explain the action of shaving.
Similarly to the confused and pushed around by society 12, 14, or 19 years old me who sat on a sink, the place where these two separate intentions get all tangled and hard to clearly define, is when blinded by neon bathroom lights, women stop (or fail to ever) actively think about the process of shaving. Because we have internalized these standards of beauty, I think many of us don’t exactly know what it really means to shave, or why (as well as for whom), we are doing it in the first place.
Turning the key in my apartment’s door, I realize that as a result, it gets very difficult to differentiate where the personal intentions ends, and where the political of the other starts. The more I think about it the flurrier the lines get, and I find myself wondering whether it’s still actually possible for a woman to completely disregard the social aspects of shaving, and to earnestly think she’s only shaving for herself.
In any case, to help move the Free Hairy Woman’s “cause” along, here’s a newsflash for you, Douche-Bag Gym Guy: it’s one thing to actually believe a woman’s only purpose in life is to make herself attractive for men, but it’s another to openly judge and attack those who don’t conform. And trust me—the last thing on my mind at 9:00 in the morning in a stuffy gym is marriage, let alone to a man (especially such a disrespectful one). So fuck off!
I have now resurfaced, and have managed to re-vision one of my pieces, which still felt a little incomplete when I last read it. I hope this semi-breakthrough makes up for my lack of blogging these past two weeks.
If you're reading this you've most likely also made it through, and I warmly congratulate you! Leave it in the comments section, and don't forget to take care.
Pure love to all,
A.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Here it goes!
Re-Vision of the “Concept, Form, Voice” assignment.
Unctuous foamy cream slowly being lathered on by an “attractive” (read barely clothed and outrageously skinny) made-up woman, splashing hot water, and an expensive five blade razor. Those are the basic elements typically being advertised to women by marketers selling the work (note that I deliberately use the more negatively connotated word “work”, and I’ll come back to the reasons behind this at a later point) of leg shaving. However, I have recently come to view with a brand new set of lenses, the conscious gender role performance that is the action of removing hair off one’s legs.
It all started when I was approached by a 20-something man I didn’t know, half way through my usual workout at the O’Keefe Fitness center on campus. In loose silver shorts with a hefty tuft of chest hair protruding from his overly revealing v-neck muscle shirt, he walks up to me and says
“If you move your feet like this while lifting the weights, you’ll get a lot more out of your training.” Resenting this unrequested “expert’s help” interruption, I took my earphones off to politely decline further interaction, but before I even had a chance to say anything, he had already bent down and reached for my legs. As his hand briefly came in contact with my lower calf, he exclaimed “Holy shit! Your legs are hairy!”
Uncertain that I had heard correctly, I asked him to repeat. As his statement sunk in a second time, I shrugged with indifference, and then found myself responding with a defiant “Well, so are yours."
“It’s not the same: I’m a guy, and I’m supposed to have hairy legs. For a chick, it’s sick-looking and not right,” he replied. Not missing a beat, I fired back “And why not?! I have killer legs, and hair naturally grows there just like it does on a man.”
“Women are supposed to shave, so they look hot and smooth, and can be pretty enough to find a boyfriend or a husband. I’d never shag a girl if her legs weren’t taken care of,” he arrogantly added.
WOAH!
“Who the hell do you think you are, to believe you have the right to judge, police, and govern women’s bodies like that?!” I shouted, attracting the curious glances of all nine other people in the gym.
“Well—”
Cutting him right off, I made it clear he had chosen to get his macho on with the wrong girl, if he expected me to sit back and nod in agreement with his offensive bullshit. This, of course, led him to abruptly exit the premises calling out “Crazy bitch,” leaving me alone to think about all this, and pretty blue in the face.
A few months ago, as the summer sun slowly shied away, it was mostly laziness that got the best of the little leg shaving ambition I ever possessed. I’ve always been a lazy winter leg shaver—that’s nothing new. But as September progressed, shame and guilt-free for the first time ever, I began embracing the idea of hairy legs, because it meant less time in the shower and more time for breakfast part two, or morning writing. And this, year-long (here I come, Spring booty skirts!) However, when this guy bent down for my legs to get personal, he head-butted pretty hard into the political.
The systematic come and go of the blade as it glides from ankle to thigh seems fairly insignificant in itself, and so does applying hair removal cream or strips. Although, when you stop to think of it, this simple action is profoundly ingrained in our society’s standards of female “beauty,” which dictate that only hair-free legs can be beautiful. And who’d possibly want be viewed as other than proper and attractive, right?
On my way home from school later in that afternoon, I pondered “Why?” “Why did I ever bother to shave my legs in the first place, if it always felt like such a chore?” Did I ever really believe only leg hair-free women are beautiful? Or is he right, and I’m in a hairy denial process because I will indeed be single my whole life?
It’s while waiting to cross the street at a red light, that I remembered my delight (which now only seems like a really alien feeling to have in the context) at age 12, when I shaved for the first time. Mama had bought me a pink two-blade Bic razor, and to my father and brothers’ despair, I had occupied the only bathroom in our four bedroom house for a whole hour.
After that first time, I was never able to muster up the feeling of excitement again. But despite my intense boredom-related emotions, every few days for the next seven years, I’d prop myself up on the bathroom sink, and reduced to invisibleness any hair on my legs. Seven years…That’s a really long time to engage in an action that isn’t really thought out past the “every other girl does it, I might as well too” point.
The little pedestrian guy lights up, and as I cross the street I’m brought back to the language specification I made earlier. I used the word “work” rather than something neutral like “task” to make a distinction between shaving solely out of personal preference for the short-lasting smoothness; and shaving out of fear of being judged as unattractive and/or of being rejected by partners or friends.
And since in my experience “work” typically defines something most people “do” not so much for their personal enjoyment, but more in order to gain something (money, usually, but social approval in this case), I try to mark the two different intentions I think can explain the action of shaving.
Similarly to the confused and pushed around by society 12, 14, or 19 years old me who sat on a sink, the place where these two separate intentions get all tangled and hard to clearly define, is when blinded by neon bathroom lights, women stop (or fail to ever) actively think about the process of shaving. Because we have internalized these standards of beauty, I think many of us don’t exactly know what it really means to shave, or why (as well as for whom), we are doing it in the first place.
Turning the key in my apartment’s door, I realize that as a result, it gets very difficult to differentiate where the personal intentions ends, and where the political of the other starts. The more I think about it the flurrier the lines get, and I find myself wondering whether it’s still actually possible for a woman to completely disregard the social aspects of shaving, and to earnestly think she’s only shaving for herself.
In any case, to help move the Free Hairy Woman’s “cause” along, here’s a newsflash for you, Douche-Bag Gym Guy: it’s one thing to actually believe a woman’s only purpose in life is to make herself attractive for men, but it’s another to openly judge and attack those who don’t conform. And trust me—the last thing on my mind at 9:00 in the morning in a stuffy gym is marriage, let alone to a man (especially such a disrespectful one). So fuck off!
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