I smile.
A young girl,
I know how to please charm gratify ingratiate
Sell Out.
I was
voted "Most Friendly" top of my graduating class yearbook editor Miss Regatta,
and later,
Phi Beta Kappa and Magna Cum Laude.
Is it true I was voted
Girl Most Likely to Kiss Ass?
I loved children nature books clean hair poetry art
and later
Plato Bach Freud Henry James Dostoevsky and Thomas Mann and I was
Not
a Feminist because I believed in
Human rights.
I smile.
No longer girl, and not yet crone, now I am loving mother, supportive wife.
I know how to empathize nurture protect coddle over-function
Self-destruct
I quit my job when my first child cried and I seldom
leave home on a night when I could be with my husband who himself is seldom home he works
most nights, and days, doing Important Things he
Makes
Money
Is it true You Cannot Have It All?
I smile.
But what are these snakes trailing from my head?
Hissing seething writhing writing daring
closeness contact intimacy threatening
Attack calling
Mothers of the World, Unite!
You have nothing to lose but your ch..........ildren homes security safety sanity
Lives
I have stopped
Smiling.
I still love children
Not nature but Mother Earth
MOTHER Earth
I still love
Books and Poetry and Art and
All Women Writing Dancing Drawing Painting Shaping Shouting
I love
Snakes
and I love
Knowing There was a time before Eve when Women Were Sacred and Powerful I love
Equal Rights and Gay Rights and The Rights to Choose What Happens to My Body and I love Those Who Have Fought For These Rights Before Me
I love
Angry Women and Gentle Women and
I love
My Sisters coming together and
Myself, at last,
Ever transmuting between the
placid coiled hair of the Willendorf Mother
and the raging tresses of Medusa.