Stripes

I didn’t notice tears making their escape down my cheeks
Until you caught them with your tongue
Raised yourself up and said, “What?”
Your eyes were sea glass in the gathering dark.
I didn’t love, but the evenings went down too fast and made me drunk
And you were the right height, your face was proportional,
A chestnut-brown smell I could almost taste, and the things you said so blunt
That my face got warm and my mouth formed a “What the hell.”
Back then I believed anything anyone said about me
Whether they said I was a poet or a whore
I was better off listening to the voice inside my head
Even if all it said was “More, more.”
Where are you now, with the stripes across your chest like days
Darkness after light after darkness after light
Are your bones weeping collagen in an unmarked grave
Did you meet a woman who treats you right.
Men like you do the dirty work of forcing themselves on history
The muscle of your hearts knotted and hard, but still you do as you are told
If your voice could be here now, what would it say through me
I mean besides that dark sound from within your throat
Deep where no light can go, quickening breath, a smile creeping into your voice
Like sunrise creeps across floorboards now in other bedrooms
What would you say if you were here?
What would you do if you could choose?
I hope you are happy as I am happy and I hope
That you can forgive me for the way I strung up these words
Like lights that will not shine bright enough or true, poetry must be another lie
Though as far as lies go, it’s still prettier than most.

P.S. This post originally featured a cropped version of Magritte’s An Act of Violence in the header. Due to STUPID CENSORSHIP ISSUES I updated the header to Magritte’s The Lovers. Here’s An Act of Violence below: 
Continue reading “Stripes”

International Women’s Day and some women writers I admire

For some reason (possibly because I’m very lucky or because I have the habit of ignoring the world around me), I get surprised when men say sexist stuff to me about my work. I was in a Moscow bar recently on a dark and stormy night, and a typical twatty overpaid British expat man of the sort that should be displayed at the zoo with a plaque reading Typical Twatty Overpaid British Expat Man told me it must be “quite nice” to have “such a fashionable hobby” as writing plays – with zero irony, of course, because I must be a bored rich girl (ahahahaha) who must go through a phase of thinking she’s the next Beckett before moving on to pottery or adult coloring books or whatever it is that bored rich girls do. Oh, and he “used to have a girlfriend who wrote plays” but “she’s in marketing now.” I do hope that “in marketing now” is a euphemism for “slept with his best friend.”

Anyway, although sexism with regard to women writers surprises me every time, and although I rarely pay attention to whether or not the author I’m reading is a woman, it must be said that not everyone thinks like me. So here’s a list of some of my favorite female writers, and their books and plays, because it’s IWD, and because whatever. They are great not because they are written by women. They are great because they are great. Continue reading “International Women’s Day and some women writers I admire”

Bug, tooth, moon

There once was a woman who gave up financial security, doctor’s appointments, decent living conditions not involving very large bugs, and other important things in order to become the true version of herself.

And the true version of herself was a version that no one was particularly interested in. Aside from a handful of men who correctly surmised that her struggle to become who she really was left her exhausted and her exhaustion left her desperate and her desperation made her available to them in ways they could enjoy.

Until the teeth started wobbling in her jaw, that is, and the circles darkened under her eyes into night.

And then she was alone. Unless you counted the very large bugs.

And one of the bugs said, “I guess you feel pretty stupid now.”

The woman took a rotten tooth and threw it at the bug and missed. Then the woman started to laugh. The bug also started to laugh.

The woman and the bug became very good friends and the woman wrote a play about their friendship and it didn’t sell. Winter came, the heating pipes froze solid, the bug died of old age.

Moonlight fell through the window, fell on the woman as her lovers had done before. She watched the smoke from her pipe curl upward and upward. One day, she thought, human beings would live on the moon. And the bugs would follow. She wouldn’t live long enough to see it happen, but she still wished all of them well.

No guilt-trip, just good times

My sweetest friend

In the early 1990s, in the weeks that led up to our departure to America, I remember walking with my father and cousin on the big stadium across from our building in Kiev. The nights were clear, and something about the lights from the more well-lit blocks of town made the sky above our heads look like a giant bowl – darker and deeper in the middle, full of stars that seemed to have been pulled down there by gravity, lighter on the edges, burnished with a reddish glow like a false dusk or dawn.

This same cousin bought a nice apartment right outside the city and we recently sat in his kitchen and drank Jameson while our sons played in the next room, occasionally interrupting a discussion where everyone did a very good job of steering clear of politics with screeches of delight as a toy train raced around the track.

My cousin and I are still in the “gathering” stage of our life, when people tend to gain more than they lose, when enough doors stand open that one doesn’t feel boxed in and claustrophobic from choices made earlier.

We are also both petulantly jobless at the moment, people who have been knocked around so much professionally that having faith in our careers feels childish. Continue reading “My sweetest friend”