#MeToo: Susan Gevirtz

Susan Gevirtz

 

 

from The Wind in her Daughtership’s Majesty : a maske, antemasque

 

The wind is my mascot
I shall not want

But even the wind
Is owned by names

And struggles against its hand

 

§

 

What’s in a girl sugar eyes
yes she could might or would

With my heavy watch on I
take my Father’s pulse

turn to deflect
the protagonist’s punch

 

§

 

IV.
I felt sorry for them. A mix of pity and compassion. A fantasy of service. As a teenage girl I befriended old men in the park. I thought they needed cheering up. I thought I had a unique capacity to do that. I believed I could be exempt from danger and sleeze. I believed I had a way through the cracks of the given problem. I learned that I was gifted for old men and many older women

wind wind wind
      The rain comes sparkling down
      This little girl says she’ll die

I went to bed. Or rather wouldn’t get up. Stayed under the covers at the foot of the bed. Outside bright sun cheer and oaks bore down through the big windows. I turned my back. Curled toward the wall. Something had to be done to show what had happened and it chose me as its signage

 

What had happened was unclear. I tried to be helpful. When she was gone I carefully unwrapped the things in one of the moving boxes. Tenderly placed the soft bloody swaths in her sock drawer where they probably belonged. But received no thanks for this

 

 

What is a girl

blood and cotton and jasmine hand lotion

keep moisture spreading hydration herding

 

 

Their childhoods all led breast-ward
An obstruction to seeing the beloved ground and finding things that fall at your feet—or so I thought of my breasted future
thus was happy that mine were late in bloom
We flung and ground and rubbed them together and against each other’s
Some like tongue tips some like sea anemones some like the sea urchins carved from their shells right after she dove for them for me
These beasts, crustacean swells, harbingers of suitors and pretime when we swam
on each other

This little girl said, “Give me a pool and I’ll cross under water”

That one said, “Give me an ocean and I’ll scale it”

Under any wave I’ll find the quiet spot, lie still face down calmly and let all

of your turbulence pass over unattended

Then the initiations came to pass: something pushed me hard under water, a rough hand over my chest wouldn’t let me up At camp on a hike the counselor put his arm over my shoulder and then further down. A coma of confusions that will never fully lift

But now I have noticed
that you speak to me like audience
You have forgotten my kinship with the off shore
fins and mistaken me for the custodian of time-keeping you may
not realize that the watch and the shore are allies
Allied in my fitness

oh the capacity for breath holding

sing its high praises though we know

it can cut both ways

in not questioning the sequence from Barbies
to girl on girl discovered
forbidden

the verboten

flickers at the edge of sight

moth to florescent night algae

Did I or did I not see the grunion run? Did I or didn’t I scare away the boys the minute I opened my mouth? This the girls of the many names also wonder. Some more than others

On the other hand the girls and women came unasked and unafraid, of all ages, curly and straight, in all sizes and strides.

You need to figure out the best angle. Head shot from above. Sideways camouflage. A little is too much. A lot not enough

 

§

 

V.
First Fall

A plan. A pill. A chicken in hand. A dressing room piled with the discarded

The slap down. The slip up—but why?

An eight-year-old has already plotted and executed one runaway at five years old. And plots the next in front of the TV on which Kennedy was just shot interrupting Lucille Ball

The rain comes sparkling down
This little girl says she’ll die
For want of a lover with a rolling eye.

 

If you were my daughter and your daughter’s mother

I’d wrap you in a flame blanket and roll you to an orchard

Where sentries would feed you oranges and you’d never have to learn

That as public property pregnancy is not yours

Flaunt it and fuck it and take your hand off it

When it suits you to agree, okay, or crack your whip and

away he’ll go

And if she harms you in the name of misguided fairness

Bring the borderline a gift and turn your back on her

Never think of the reason for it, lock up and hunker down

In your own savings of miles

 

Enfeebled in the outerlands

Outsider outside the province of promise

 

§

 

VI.

Placeholders for futures

You will live among us

Third guess turntablist

Keep steering back

We do lose our ways

Some tunes taunt return

Some return us to us

Literally your neighbors

Don’t know you

Yet you yearn for recognition

In disguise as a name

but unpronouncable

Have we been here before

almond eyes

You are not in this room

I am in age days else you where distance dictates

joy of muscle stretch

 

§

 

They will teach us wind prediction 

Off to on shore morning breezes 

From west to low the mountain caper thistles  

Rhythm helps us hike the gorge but drop it

at sight of sea  

So and so will never come never go

The wind wind shrill and smart

dances with a broom

Circle and pick

a girl for the center

She must choose a name

Sing, sing

What is a ring game

Sing the middle rots the middle swirls

I saw the promise the delight

the adjustment behind your eyes

I saw the arrangement of compromise

I saw you counting four five six how

did they do it before

resounding chorus together we turn
behind they pass us
fist over fist

What I want to say is one thing do another

And wish for you yet a third

Is there an outside or only refrain

beaten up echo

disclaimer to excavate

 

§

 

Placeholders For Futures

Do we dream of new captions or underwrite other lyrics

Do we wish for a safe house

Do we excise the lines with a plane ticket

Please do tell us what to do

Here start over

Tell me what you are sleeping under

Quilt of weight and promise

Come with the bees and talk in a circle

Pagan cast or pretend another

I’d like to give

the ark promise

but we have labored in the trenches

And wish to save you

so much grovel

You may win a key
to the golden city
And hope when you
arrive the gold is still sun

Keep steering back

We do lose our way

disabused of rest

brings ambush

If something is

broken sing to it

of a hearth or a hunt or a menu unrent

No, there’s a lot I

don’t know in your nomenclature

But still to narrow

the width between generations

the said and the felt

is an isthmus

of belief

the boat moves toward

 

§

 

A girl is singing into the camera

A camera is putting hands in her hair

I saw you toss the kites on high blow
Birds about the sky

Beast of field and tree

Flowers in the summer fires in the fall

I would deteach

these poles from tendons tendencies

Enfeebled in the outerlands

Outsider outside the province of promise

The wind or a car coming

A car coming or water rushing

So Flora, bride of the west wind

Is it really you who controls all flowers

beyond doer and done

outside the dyad is not

give over not in

 

§

 

Rest nervous system shed
plaque heart with
dusk and the queen of wands rise
over the hill
the desire to intervene
like blood on her hands

Once again you
And the point are complete strangers
And not enough of too much has been said

All: when the wind blows from the south, that which no canvas sails could withstand,
undress and conceive by the wind, give birth to girls

 

§

 

This poem first appeared in Jacket.