Below is a sampling of poems I've written between 2008-2019.
In 2008, I took a summer intensive course on Feminist Multicultural Therapy at the University of Utah. I was assigned feminist readings. As we were also instructed to keep a self-reflection journal, I was inspired to write poetry about a changing relationship. Here is one of several poems that I wrote during the time I took this class, influenced by the poems in Kay Leigh Hagan’s book “Fugitive Information: Essays From A Feminist Hothead” (1993).
Self- reflection
I turn inward when the world fails me,
When expectations are unmet
And I am deserted.
Sitting in solitude
A wound licking of sorts
A salve for senselessness
A break before re-engagement
“This time it will be different.”
I will be different because the world will not.
This next poem, Lilies, is about loving your labia. The first author is Makeda Meeks who contributed the content. I turned it into a sonnet. It was a collaborative effort that we finalized in the spring of 2012. You can download a pdf of the published version on the Muckraking page, entitled "A Tale of Two Mental Health Organizations".
Lilies
Come! Take a walk with me.
On a given day we can spend an hour,
In a garden of diversity
To see different stages of flower.
On the left there is a wondrous variety
Of Calla, Madonna, and Asiatic lilies.
Some buds demure and others expose
Petals unfurled for the world to see.
Cylindrical forms tell pollinated histories
Emitting fragrances to delight the nose.
Before our eyes, friend, let’s behold
Deep, dark and purple brightly splayed
Golden trumpets catch sunlight in each fold
Large and petite is this multi-sized array.
The cunning insects do discover
The delicate secret of the flower head
A glistening sticky sweet delicacy.
Diversity is what nature does uncover,
But is overlooked by the mind unread
Beautiful variety womanity.
To take a personal garden tour
Snatch a mirror and have a gaze.
Ignore the silly and shameful lore.
Your vulva is something to amaze!
Labia come in many forms and sizes;
Judy Chicago served them up that way.
- And reality is beautiful if only you will it.
Cosmetogynecology proponents offer prizes
To women who will have to pay
To live with a garden in an imaginary limit.
Writing poems helps me sort out my feelings of love, pain and confusion. The poem below was written in the spring of 2014, inspired by e.e. cummings “since feeling is first” and the shortcuts in written communication found in text messaging.
my body felt sublime
my body felt sublime
i paid no nevermind
2 my heart or my head…
Though i heard u said:
intoxicating find -
subtext i misread :( not Feeling, nor thinking,
or costly head shrinking
Halt! impartiality;
with u is ecstasy
to fair-trade unblinking;)
rent for infinity.
Requited love’s not (a)given?
Life is best for those living in
The present - mostly is too tense
without meaning to be dense,
state: A Body Does Not Fib!
/that is my deluded $en$e:/
The next poems are structured like the poems and ideas found in Donna Haraway’s essays “Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective” (1988) and “A Cyborg Manifesto” (1985). They were also written in the spring of 2014. In both poems I am dealing with my belief that I like someone more than they like me and am stymied that I can't move the relationship beyond the metaphysical.
Wanderlust
Calling on mutual affection
A place and a space
I go there with you.
Where you see me
Right through me
From across and above
From nowhere and everywhere.
I visit when we’re apart
The structure is complicated and contradictory
And it’s forbidden to ask about the future.
Apparatus of Sweet Sexuality
The desire to know and savor
Focusing on the potent objects:
Us…You…Me
This triune ordering can vary.
Lust is tricky and risky: Love is a four letter word::
There is the capacity to (co)construct meaning.
The result is a mutually agreed upon moving target – pleasure.
Fallible participation by interactive individuals.
“Objects as agents” embody sexual union.
Boundaries (e)merge with the tangle of bodies…
And, as we assume (sexual) positions.
It is here where our realities and fantasies converge.
This poem was written at the end of the winter 2019 season. This final version is very different from the early drafts ("moving on with you in fierce love") where I started off based on Rumi's poetry. Put together, it doesn’t make sense logically and emotionally. I'm trying to capture how it is for me in a relationship with new knowledge.
Errant Love
Errant love vanished and I became a seer; no reflection, I communed with myself. What of bonding and bondage? To predict from hindsight, I returned to now. I revisited disbelief. Inhaling confidence and exhaling devotion; I bound heart with hurt.