She must learn again to speak
starting with I
starting with We
starting as the infant does
with her own true hunger
and pleasure
and rage.

yesterday i had a wild thot. hearing james brown on the radio singing say it loud: i'm black & i'm proud. i thot, wonder how it would feel to say, say it loud, i'm female & proud. it was obviously too silly. think how embarrassed i would be if a neighbor came to the door. what if john came home & i was making the bed yelling I'M FEMALE & I'M PROUD? i'd never hear the end of it. i started saying it and nearly choked on the words. coulnt get them out. realized it was a lie. i aint proud. didnt have a thing to do with it. took pot luck and came out a broad. kept trying to say it. after a few tries, i could. it wasnt very loud. it was probly the quietest sound in the room. me patting pillows into place on the bed and muttering, i'm female & i'm proud. then i got a little hostile and said it loud, i'm female and proud and thot about it and wanted to feel it and said it loud i'm female and proud and after the record was over i yelled it a couple of times and it felt okay, and i havent done it since but maybe i will again.

Once when she felt herself growing older, she said to the mirror, "Why am I afraid of birthdays?"  "Because," the mirror said, "there is something you have always wanted to do which you have been afraid of doing and you know time is running out."  And she ran from the mirror as quickly as she could because she knew in that moment she was not afraid and she wanted to seize the time.

If woman is inconstant, good, I am faithful to ebb and flow, I fall in season and now is a time of ripening.

There is no savor more sweet, more salt than to be glad to be what, woman, and who, myself, I am...

For you, who have
Condemned me as
Witch, as
Mother,     – I
Have no more
Any pity;
For you who have
Despised me as
Succubi, as
Ball-breaker...

My Passion is
Mine, nor am I
Vampire, nor
Banshee, nor
Screamer, nor
Waiting;     – I
Have turned away, and     I
Face a distance I
Have not run;      – I
Raise my fist beside the
Door of My Dreams and I
Take Time,
My Time,
All of it
In my Hands.

I have urged on Woman independence of Man, not that I do not think the sexes mutually needed by one another, but because in Woman this fact has led to an excessive devotion, which has cooled love, degraded marriage, and prevented either sex from being what it should be to itself or the other.
I wish Woman to live, first for God's sake.  Then she will not make an imperfect man her god, and thus sink to idolatry.  Then she will not take what is not fit for her from a sense of weakness and poverty.  Then, if she finds what she needs in Man embodied, she will know how to love, and be worthy of being loved.

Offspring

I tried to tell her:
    This way the twig is bent.
    Born of my trunk and strengthened by my roots,
    You must stretch newgrown branches
    Closer to the sun
    Than I can reach.

I wanted to say:
    Extend my self to that far atmosphere
    Only my dreams allow.

But the twig broke,
And yesterday I saw her
Walking down an unfamiliar street,
    Feet confident
    Face slanted upward toward a threatening sky,
And
    She was smiling
    And she was
    Her very free,
    Her very individual,
    Unpliable
    Own

i am running into a new year
and the old years blow back
like a wind
that i catch in my hair
like strong fingers like
all my old promises and
it will be hard to let go
of what i said to myself
about myself
when i was sixteen and
twenty-six and thirty-six
even thirty-six but
i am running into a new year
and i beg what i love and
i leave to forgive me

"Do you have trouble getting to sleep?"
"No," I said, "I want to sleep all the time."
"Well, you don't have the clinical signs of depression," he said,
clicking his pen.

I left then, for good,
and as I walked
the song broke through,
the loud green sound
of this garden called the earth,
the garden between my thighs.
The sky's spinning song
of light and dark:
a rocking in my blood,
the ocean's lowing like a cow
looking for her calf.

I sat and sang by the water's edge
where I knew he would not go.