I've got food now, a good friend drove from santa fe to ferry me groceries...a whole chicken, collards, bacon, all kinds of stuff... its a little unnerving how quickly not having enough food can fuck me up....esp. with this physically demanding life i live here on the mountain side. As i write this my tummy is full and a certain calm warmth oozes from my skin.....
i was in the kitchen heavily buttering yet another big slab of bread, chatting to myself about how much i fucking love butter when i suddenly remembered that poem by dorothy allison... "butter my tongue" and how much i loved that whole book "the women who hate me". she shaped my writing in my early 20's. she gave us white trash dykes something to chew on, relate to and be proud of.
so i ran to my frighteningly dusty bookshelf (i found it between audre and chrystos), sat on the floor next to the woodstove and thumbed away, eating up her surviving words....
"butter, butter, butter my tongue
i've lost my rhythm
the pulse of my language
feel ready to break
feel ready to crumble
feel ready to fall
like a doll without knees..."
"
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I'm so glad you like her. I heard her speak and do some readings in Columbia, SC during the early 90's. I think she'd come back home to Greenville for some reason or another. Or maybe it was just a stop on her speaking tour. So much of her writing is about how hard growing up in SC was for her. Her voice is so perfect for reading her work.
So glad you got some food! You need to keep up your strength so high up. My doctor asked me why my blood levels were so great this past week. "Ramen Noodles", I say.
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