Celebrate Transgender Poetry! Aaron Shurin's "Woman on Fire"

LADY * QUEEN * DOLL * WOMAN

Using these words
not to belittle women
not to mock them.
Not to speak about women at all;

to speak of ourselves.
Unnamed regions -
rose-pink and rust-fire --
beyond the stern
and arrogant borders of manhood.

A shortage of terms, perhaps.
language caught
in the vice of opposites, of only
two, so that what is not
man in us
we call woman.


From "Woman on Fire" by Aaron Shurin.

I found this amazing poem that explores gender expression on page 85 of the mind-blowing "Another Mother Tongue: Gay Words, Gay Worlds" by Judy Grahn.


What are some of your favorite Transgender and Gender Expression poems that we can celebrate?

Celebrate Lesbian Poetry! Paula Gunn Allen's "Some Like Indians Endure"

Continuing this National Poetry Month's celebration, here's a really powerful one:

dykes remind me of indians
like indians dykes
are supposed to die out
or forget
or drink all the time
or shatter
go away
to nowhere
to remember what will happen
if they dont

they dont
anyway
even though it
happens
and they remember
they dont

because the moon remembers
because so does the sun
because so do the stars
remember
and the persistent stubborn
grass
of the earth


from "Some Like Indians Endure,"
Paula Gunn Allen (Laguna/Sioux)

Check out this great link to an entry on the poet Paula Gunn Allen at glbtq.com.

I found this poem on pg. 49 of the amazing "Another Mother Tongue: Gay Words, Gay Worlds" by Judy Grahn

What are some of your favorite Lesbian poems that we can celebrate?

LOVE IS... Two Saris Together

Okay, for the finale of this week of Queer Love stories, here's an excerpt from the amazing "Another Mother Tongue" by Judy Grahn:

Delicate shell-bead necklaces in warm subtle tones of brown, orange, and cream cascade from my neck as I write. They are a gift from my friend, Linda Marie, who brought them from the south coast of India, where the shells were gathered from a sparkling beach that slopes into the intense blue water of the Indian Ocean. They are strung together into slender necklaces by the women and children of the village Kanya Kumari. As Linda explained to me, these Tamil-speaking dark-skinned Hindu people are descendants of the original women-centered tribes who, centuries ago, were pushed to the south of India by the invading patriarchal Aryans who began to dominate the north. Still matrilineal, the women, as so many others around the world, have been reduced to selling necklaces to tourists for a living.

They worship the goddess Kumari, a Spinster God who never took a lover and never married. The great temple of Kumari overlooks the blue sea at the very south tip of India. Huge wooden doors two stories high once opened to allow the godess, as she sits in her large statue form, to look out over the sea. Long beams of light were said to reflect over the water, gleams of the torchlights held by her worshippers and reflected from the diamonds set into her nose. But once years ago, a Portuguese colonial ship caught in a storm had mistaken her diamond light for a lighthouse signal and crashed on the rocks. Since then, the great doors of Kumari's temple are closed to the sea, though her temple services go on as before.

The local people live in thatched houses of their own making. Rape is unknown in this region, and the men are very shy around the women. The title of respect is "Mother." Linda Marie, an American woman married to an Indian man from a more northern province, had traveled to the south coast villages in 1966 and made a special friend named Antonia. Now in 1978 she returned to find her again. This time she sought an added dimension to their friendship, for in the meantime in America she had divorced her husband and had come out as a Lesbian. What follows is her account of the second visit; she has used an autobiographical character name, Cassie, as the short, red-haired, white American traveler.

Two-Saris-Together

The next morning Cassie brought Saris for Antonia and her daughter and sisters. Then she took Antonia to her hotel-room and asked her to stay until Cassie went back to the USA. Cassie asked the question by pointing to the floor, then to the two beds, then to herself and the other woman. Antonia agreed, and they put the mattresses on the floor next to one another. Then so many hours were spent talking, talking, each in her own language, and the language of women, tossing their heads and waving their hands...

Cassie learned from Antonia that her mother had died when she was small but before dying she had a hex sign tattooed on Antonia's arm. Antonia taught Cassie what the word was in her language, Tamil, for two-turbans together; then another word for two-saris-together. But as for a-sari-and-a-turban-together, even when Cassie repeated the word in a near-whisper, Antonia would bite her lip and blush. Since she didn't seem to mind Cassie saying the words for two saris or two turbans out loud, Cassie surmised that a-sari-and-a-turban together was a dirty word in Tamil...

Antonia was humming, holding up her hands with her eyes closed and weaving back and forth. She knew the word "Love." She pronounced it "Luva." She understood love to mean our secret, the one we keep from the world. What would happen if the world knew an Untouchable from India and an Outcast from America shared a secret? Would it start world wars? Would the United Nations forbid women from traveling alone? If these two were caught, would they be cast to the sea and fed to the sharks? Or worse yet, would they be teated as lepers, would dogs bark and children laugh and point as they passed by? Cassie wondered. The best that could happen if everyone knew this secret would be that women from all over the world would mingle shamelessly and the men would become silent before their power.

LOVE is... this, too.

Thanks for going along with me on this Valentine's week exploration of so many different kinds of Queer Love. I hope your lives are infused with blessings and love, too.

Namaste,
Lee



The excerpt is from pgs. 107-111.
Thanks to Sara Wilson Etienne for the candy heart link! (Click on the "Gay Love" candy heart above to link to the site where you can create your own text on a candy heart image!)

Celtic Men and the origins of the word "Horny"

It's Monday, so of course it's time for another Bitchin' Queer Quote!

Here's the Greek historian Diodorus Siculus talking about the homosexuality of Celtic men, 80 years before the rebellion of Queen Boudica (see last week's Bitchin' Queer Quote for more on that!)

Although they have good-looking women, they pay very little attention to them, but are really crazy about having sex with men. They are accustomed to sleep on the ground on animal skins and roll around with male bedmates on both sides. Heedless of their own dignity, they abandon without a qualm the bloom of their bodies to others. And the most incredible thing is that they don't think this is shameful. But when they proposition someone, they consider it dishonorable if he doesn't accept the offer!

And the main god the Celtic men identified with?

He "...was an amiable-looking bearded man with antlers. He was the Horned One: "The horned god was especially linked with male sexuality and often appears [...] erect [...] Moreover, when erect, he is sometimes portrayed in the company of men, not women."

Horny was his name, giving us our slang word for sexual desire, horniness.

Gotta love those ancient Celts, AND Judy Grahn's "Another Mother Tongue: Gay Words, Gay Worlds" (pg. 138) for making sure we still have this incredible piece of our history!

Namaste,

Lee

Bulldike: Celtic Lesbian Warriors and Queen Boudica's War

Today's Bitchin' Queer Quote is about the Celts, who lived in what became Great Britain, arriving there around 1500 B.C.

Celtic women in this ancient time wielded authority, owned property, and the older women were the ones who taught the young men how to fight. "The martial arts teachers of the best-known legendary Celtic hero, Cu Chulain, were two powerful women, Buannan ("The Lasting One") and Scathach ("The Shadowy One".)"

"Groups of women warriors (ceremonial Lesbians with institutional power) called gwiddonot are recorded in a medieval saga, Kulwch and Olwen: these women fought in battles, lived together, and uttered prophecies for the tribe."

After the Roman occupation of the British Isles, and their refusal to acknowledge a woman who ruled a people, the Romans seized even more land and property, and persecuted the Druid priesthood. When the Celtic Queen Boudica protested, they flogged her and raped her daughters.

Queen Boudica planned her revenge: She plotted with the other Celtic leaders and raised the largest army ever seen in Britain - 120,000 people to fight the Romans!

Queen Boudica and her army took Colechester, London and one other town before the final battle with the Romans - in which over 230,000 people participated.

The Roman historian Tacitus described Queen Boudica on that final day:

Boudica drove round in a chariot, her daughters with her. As they reached each tribal contingent, she proclaimed that the Britons were well used to the leadership of women in battle. But she did not come among them now as a descendant of mighty ancestors, eager to avenge her lost wealth and kingdom. Rather she was an ordinary woman, fighting for her lost freedom, her bruised body, and the outraged virginity of her daughters. Roman greed no longer spared their bodies, old people were killed, virgins raped. But the gods would grant a just vengeance: the legion that had dared to fight had perished; the others were skulking in their camps and looking for a means of escape. They would never face the roar and din of the British thousands, much less their charges and their grappling hand-to-hand. Let them consider how many they had under arms, and why! Then they would know that on that day it was victory or death. That was her resolve, as a woman; the men could live, if they liked, and be slaves.

Ultimately, the Romans won the hard fought battle and the war, and Queen Boudica took poison. The Romans hunted for her grave, not wanting any memory of her to survive...

And now I have to quote Judy Grahn, who wraps up this amazing history (or should I write herstory) perfectly:

Perhaps Boudica and some of the other Hicca women in that war were ceremonial Lesbians; perhaps like other tribal folk they also had special homosexual gods of their own and special rites concerning their social functions. In any case, through their slang, her descendents and others like them gave to Lesbians - the most rebellious, armed, "masculine," warriorlike, dangerous, and deserving - and give them still the ancient, proud, frightening, street-talk title: bulldiker, bulldagger, Boudica.

The next time you hear the word "bulldike," realize the power, majesty and proud herstory behind it, and behind all Lesbians, everywhere.

Oooh! I LOVE learning about this stuff!

Namaste,

Lee

The above is culled from pgs. 134 to 145 in the amazing "Another Mother Tongue: Gay Words, Gay Worlds" by Judy Grahn.

Athens

Welcome again to "I'm Here. I'm Queer. What the Hell do I Read?" If you missed the whole introduction, check out this link (or just scroll down a bit to Saturday's post!)

Today's entry is "This Week's Bitchin' Queer Poem."

But first, it's important for me to let you all know that my intent is for this blogsite to be inclusive - a cool and useful resource and community building tool for everyone interested or invested in the GLBTQ teen world of literature...

So, This Week's Bitchin' Queer Poem is about women-lovin'-women! Or should I write, perhaps, womyn-lovin'-womyn! From our Herstory (it's amazing how male-centric our language is, isn't it?)

Enjoy!

The travel folder for Lesbos, Jacqueline Lapidus says, does not say that Sappho slept with women:

but we’re not fooled
we lock our door at the YWCA
and fuse, faces flushed,
palms damp, tongues
tasting the names of Sappho’s lovers:
Anactoria
Andromeda
Atthis
Damophyla
Erinna
Gyrinno
Gongyla
Gorgo
Hero
Mnasidika
Pleistodika
And Timas of Anatolia who died young.

- Jacqueline Lapidus

I found this amazing poem on pg. 173 of “Another Mother Tongue: Gay Words, Gay Worlds”, by Judy Grahn. The poem was first published in “Conditions: Seven [ N.Y.: Conditions, 1981], pg. 91