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THE NEED FOR ANDROGYNOUS DEITIES
WITH ANKLE BRACELETS THAT JINGLE
When the towers began to collapse,
The women fell to their knees and wept
And the men raised their fists and yelled “Bastards,”
And I could not help but wonder
Whether the instinct toward War
Was not pregenetically disposed
According to gender:
For it does seem
That women’s power is to create life
And Men’s power is to destroy it—
Particularly in patriarchal cultures
That worship a God created in man’s image.
If I were a man
Things would be different:
I’d be a drag queen and that would explain everything.
But I’m a middle-aged white woman with male authority issues
Which makes me even more of a freak.
So when the president used God to justify threats of war
The first thing I wanted to do was jump in the front seat of my
beat-to-shit Mustang
And high tail it the hell out of town.
But I don’t have a beat-to-shit Mustang
So I got on my bike and pedaled west
Through the devastation and debris
And there, dancing gleefully amid the wreckage
Was a kick line of prepubescent Hindu deities,
Their bodies painted blue and their eyes enlarged with kohl
As if to entice me,
As if to allure me,
As if to remind me that change is good,
That, despite the concussive magnitude of the drama I had sustained,
That transition is necessary.
And when I reached the west side drive,
There, on one side,
The ulcerated blister continued to hemorrhage smoke into the atmosphere,
While rising amid the silver sequined chips of the river,
There she stood -
The Statue of Liberty
Welcoming all to these bedraggled shores.
And I loved her! I loved her!
Not only because everything she wore matched
But because of her magnanimity of heart
Her generosity of spirit
Because of the love she extended toward the other
And of the like humanism she demanded of all who stood behind her.
Yes, the love for the other.
Perhaps that is why
The first to wave the flag
Were not the inveterate New Yorkers.
No, it was not the savvy,
The cynical,
Or the sophisticated
Such as myself.
It was the Mexicans who deliver take-out on bicycles.
It was the Ecuadorian bus boys
And the Nigerians who sell socks and watches on Ninth Avenue.
So I was not surprised
When I bought an American Flag manufactured in Taiwan
from a Filipino woman.
She only spoke one phrase in English:
“A dollah a dollah a dollah.”
And it brought a smile to my heart.
Yes, the love for the other.
Isn’t that what had all brought us here—
A contempt for the familiar
And the promise of the unknown.
And I knew then
That if Bin Laden himself
Were to stagger up this corrugated coast,
I would welcome him for tea
And feel enlarged
By his perspective.
These thoughts do not
make me Unamerican.
They make me more of one.
And they make me one hell of a woman.
Helen Stratford is an east village poet and performance artist. |