H e a r t S o n s & H e a r t D a u g h t e r s of A l l e n G i n s b e r g

N a p a l m H e a l t h S p a : R e p o r t 2 0 1 4 : A r c h i v e s E d i t i o n

ANNE WALDMAN

from Matriot Acts

“Women are the weapons of history, we are the

symbolic representations of compassion and decency.”

– Carrie Mae Weems

invoke the hyena in petticoats!

laughing hyena, spotted hyena, striped -

all stalk the charnel ground amidst

microscopic & telescopic worlds

a step ahead of what is to come in lineage

in gratitude, in naming las madres

las mujeres,

look for reclamation, sniff it out…

in a voice not my own but all of them

the wizened ductile face of slumbering female memory:

beginning of time, the timepiece of time

she who was the mother of a ghost ship

Ship of Locked Awe and subjugated dream

she who could never be reduced to a “gender issue”

she who announced a talismanic bond to planet

who saw vole tracks in the snow once on the

radical poet’s tiny death plot

Lorine, Lorine! you can come out now…

who salvaged a blow dryer for the art people while

they sold the rights to textures of paper, of glass

(touch me, touch me with crenellated beauty now)

particles in the sunlight, a democratic grace

who documented all hurts and slights & transmuted them

to poetry, to flesh, to the wink after sex

she was a challenge in my heart, the penultimate mother

did you have any animals around you from the start?

did you enjoy yourself a lot?

how old were you when you started this running around?

what was your mother tongue?

was it in a language that translates “ocean of bliss” to a seed syllable

She reports a tabula rasa and a grandmother who cautions

“Denial Silences Violence”

“Remember the Suffragettes”

or considers William Blakes’s schema of Los representing

Imagination in Action

who then tries to create forms so they can be recognized

who then gets deluded that it created the universe and can thus control it

and then whose zones split into genders

genders lost in realms of jealousy & fractal time

battling the projected others

little figurines with large vulvas and bursting bellies

see? you see?

seeing one’s own reflection in a pool produces a double

while another character sacrifices herself to the sun

[Originally published in NHS 2006, http://www.poetspath.com/napalm/nhs06/Waldman.htm.]