Best Herstory Poems
(for Virginia Woolf)
She wanted to buy some flowers but drowned Herself instead,
drifting along the ebbing flow of time, with warm
water cracking Her slim figure and airless lungs.
‘will I freeze the river?’ She thought, wondering if the trees
would still rustle in the wind if She wasn’t alive to notice it,
thinking if Her man’s heart would still beat if She could
no longer shock its rhythmical thump-thud-stop with kisses.
the wood was chopped down around Her home. The
veranda from which She surveyed the world was but
deafened by cruel hacking chopping and sawing at the
hands of men whom took Her feminine beauty away.
She became the water as She died, became the weeds,
became the bark that broke her own back, the pen and the phallus.
‘this isn’t purgatory’ She realised, ‘this is revenge and reward’.
‘I am a sacrifice to literature. I am a sacrifice for the word’.
from writer to death to glory to ink
to the lies under rocks uncovered,
to god to me to the taking of Her own life,
She is the paper in our very hands.
slithering through a suffragette smattering
the serpentine has no shoulder
on which to give
or have taken
piggyback rides through pantsuit criterion
so certainly lacks the same of which to dry witch salt tears with
whirling up and around then down up her ankle
thick thick thigh
deliciously dry coconut shunt
lipstick cracking
open pistachio shells
bravo to the mercenaries!
at least the split is red enough to pull the lever
and
spill how
women got their seat
at the
baccarat table
The End of Herstories
It used to be called senility
now Alzheimer’s, or dementia
but in Agatha’s case I’d choose
primary progressive aphasia
in which her language capabilities
slowly and progressively became
impaired as the author of more
than eighty novels lost the ability
to swim in the Alphabet Soup.
Postmortem textual analysis
suggests her vocabulary decreased
by fifteen to thirty percent.
And was her last mystery
“Elephants Can Remember”
an explanation or
a cry for help?
As ancient matriarchal polytheism
of local, domestic economic circles
gave way to patriarchal elite empire-builders,
Transcendent monotheism not only overwhelmed
immanent herstoric polytheism
but this had the further historical effect
of secularizing nature's evolving narrative
and desecrating anthro-exceptionalist verbal nature
LeftBrain Powers of persuasive speech
fallen from an original co-animated experience
of indigenously wise win/win resonant sounds
harmonic songs
spoken legends
inspired myths
of polytheistic GoldenRule Paradise Lost
disharmonious evil
retold dissociations
bedeviling competitions
Wealth Spirited Man v Health Natured MotherEarth
Natural Mono-Man v Spiritual PolyTheistic Earth,
AnthroHistory v Her Indigenous EarthStory
Transcendent White Patriarchy v Marginalized NonWhite EcoMatriarchs
History v Her Indigenous Body/Mind Experience
Lost in misty herstoric myths
of formerly sacred EarthMothers
with wiki-powers of healing,
nurturing multicultural humane
RightListening empowerment
Through nutritional
polyculturally divine
LeftUnSpoken enlightenment
HerStoric feelings
needs survival
wants thrival
shared by strong-rooted plants
soulful spirited animals
including bicamerally balanced people
populating EarthMother's sacred
polytheistic-panentheistic
monotheistic-atheistic
political health-economic wealth
EarthTribal sentient planet.
(Revelation 22:15)
Outside are the dogs, those who practice magic arts, the sexually immoral,
The murderers, the idolaters and everyone who loves and practices falsehood.
I, Jesus, have sent my angel to give you this testimony for the churches.
I am the Root and the Offspring of David, and the bright Morning Star.
"I read these verses, and my heart grows desperately earnest."
Lord, please let my runaway cat return safely to me.
Even if she wants to come back, the world outside is a minefield;
She dares not take a step.
My cat, who was like my own alter ego,
Now cowers in fear before another cat—her niece-like kin whom she once gave sweet milk.
Chased away frantically, she vanishes into the shroud of darkness.
Lord, I pray to You with all my broken heart,
Let my cat, who has been missing for three months, come back to me!
And the Lord, at last, heard my weeping voice,
And briefly sent that sweet cat back to my arms.
Exhausted, worn out, she crawled back to me,
Finding her way to the secretive, weathered kitchen window.
As I fed her in frantic haste, I whispered:
"Hurry, eat up. They might catch your scent and attack you."
And so, I frantically smoke my familiar Dunhill cigarettes.
For filling the air with my own scent is the only way left
To shield you and hide your tracks.
"Hurry, please!"
With my tear-stained window, I finally closed the view
Of those eyes that gazed back at me endlessly.
That beautiful history of yours
Will now never return again.
History?
No, it is Herstory.
It must be rewritten that way.
Even today, I open that kitchen window,
Waiting for my alter ego.
"I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last,
The Beginning and the End."
A season passes,
The door opens and closes,
And though I desperately exhale my cigarette smoke into the air,
She never returns.
That cat was a cat of quantum mechanics.
When I open my eyes, she is nowhere to be seen,
But the moment I close my eyes, she truly exists.