Here's a special Christmas Eve selection of what I've gleaned from I Can Has Cheezburger efforts. There are some really creative folks out there.
Friday, December 24, 2010
LOLCATS CHRISTMAS EVE ROUND-UP 24 DECEMBER 2010
NEW POEM
(Whistler's Lesbian Mother)
I saw my mother's despair
sometimes days on end
Watched her find scraps
to feed her ravenous mind
Hang clothes on the line
Knead biscuits, iron shirts
Stir jam in July kitchens with
sweat pooling around her feet
bare on the linoleum she had
washed that morning before
we all got up. I tried to keep
my own shame and panic from her
but could not because I was
cut from her flesh like biscuits
She stopped by my bed at night
when she got up to pee or
look out at clouds in the darkness
Listening for tornadoes and
planning what to do if one came,
my father gone with the only car
She would cup my sleeping cheek
with her calloused palm and promise
someday things would be okay
I have forgiven her more often than
I have ever prayed. What I want now
is for her to come wake me up
one last time and tell me she is happy
safe fed held close, she has at last
gotten a good night's sleep and
I can stop grieving for how this world
used her down to bare knuckles.
© Maggie Jochild, written 24 December 2010, 2:59 a.m.
Thursday, December 23, 2010
HUBBLE THURSDAY 23 DECEMBER 2010
(Three-Trillion-Mile-Long Jet From a Wobbly Star)
Every Thursday, I post a very large photograph of some corner of space captured by the Hubble Space Telescope and available online from the picture album at HubbleSite, followed by poetry after the jump.
HIS STILLNESS
by Sharon Olds
The doctor said to my father, "You asked me
to tell you when nothing more could be done.
That's what I'm telling you now." My father
sat quite still, as he always did,
especially not moving his eyes. I had thought
he would rave if he understood he would die,
wave his arms and cry out. He sat up,
thin, and clean, in his clean gown,
like a holy man. The doctor said,
"There are things we can do which might give you time,
but we cannot cure you." My father said,
"Thank you." And he sat, motionless, alone,
with the dignity of a foreign leader.
I sat beside him. This was my father.
He had known he was mortal. I had feared they would have to
tie him down. I had not remembered
he had always held still and kept quiet to bear things,
the liquor a way to keep still. I had not
known him. My father had dignity. At the
end of his life his life began
to wake in me.
Wednesday, December 22, 2010
SISTERHOOD FEELS GOOD
Remember this?
If you were a dyke-feminist in the 70s through the early 80s, you probably had this image as a poster titled "Sisterhood Feels Good" hanging in your house. It really was ubiquitous. Mine hung over my bed for a decade, a yellow-tinted reminder of how "Feminism was the theory, lesbianism was the practice."
The photographer is Donna Gottschalk, and I write this post in part to ensure her name starts being attached to this image wherever it appears. She says she took this at a "big women's powwow in Pennsylvania 1969, very cold" but cannot recall the date or time, so we hope one of you out there can identify it for herstory. She also states the wimmin in the photo didn't want to be outed at the time, but if you are one of the two in bed here and would now like to have your name attached, this is your chance.
When I moved from the land collective in Durango to San Francisco in early spring 1978, this image was in my mind, a goal I hoped to achieve: Lying in a small urban bed pooling my warmth with another dyke. I know I was not alone in that goal. In fact, I suspect it was a prime motivator in why we went to so many meetings, rallies, and other events. There was "something about the women" running throughout every choice we made. And, yes, I achieved my goal too many times to count.
So this image unlocks not only a collective intent and theory, but also collective memory.
I invite you to share whatever it stirs for you. But as always, be kind. Honesty and kindness go well together, if you aim for a Grahn-ish plainspeak.
Tuesday, December 21, 2010
NEW SET OF ORDERS
I ask my lesbian and gay folk to celebrate the ending of DADT by NOT enlisting, and NOT putting their bodies at the service of an imperial dominance machine. We have not had an honorable war in our lifetimes, and it is not likely one will ever emerge, the way lines of power are currently established.
I know that for many working class young people, the military is one of few economic survival strategies. This is no accident. I understand the pinch. I once myself seriously considered enlisting strictly to pay for education and an expensive version of security. If you can't find an alternative, I do not judge you.
But, I ask those who have led in the movement to repeal DADT to now switch their energies to finding alternatives to military service for our young adults. I want the predominant lesbian and gay issue of our leaders to be insuring job security, affordable education, health care and decent housing for all of us, because that in fact is what we need. What will give us dignity and community. What will win us allies and respectful equals.
But it will mean looking hard at race and class, not just a single issue. It will mean focusing on the freedom and safety of women and children, including (and especially) those living in countries our military currently occupies for reasons completely divorced from democracy. It will mean we stop fetishizing uniforms and any version of masculinity, and instead push our vast national power toward serving the needs of the world, not the interests of white boys who make sure their sons never get drafted.
Because we have insisted all along that "they" recognize our essential humanity, those who wished to create special second-rate categories for us. With the shift comes our responsibility to behave in ways which our having been excluded taught us to appreciate, to behave with enlightenment and compassion.
Don't enlist, don't kill. Dismantle the threat of force used to control the globe for corporations. Be authentically queer.
Booyah.
LOLCATS WEEKLY ROUND-UP 21 DECEMBER 2010
Here's the weekly best of what I've gleaned from I Can Has Cheezburger efforts. There are some really creative folks out there.
Monday, December 20, 2010
NEW POEM
DREAM INTERPRETER
The tea-colored water of swamps
is jewel clear and body warm
Standing in the crotch of cypress trees
I can look down to leaf-shagged bottom
and see my dead tugged past
by currents too weak to grind corn
Longing is enough to keep us alive
but we'll never molt or blow our bud
until we stop waiting for the woman
who holds us at arm's length
Murder your daydreams, lever down
the henges. See what pushes up
in next April's mud.
© Maggie Jochild, 19 December 2010, 7:13 p.m.
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