Woman-Identified

(for amy on her 38th birthday)

when a woman writes of breast cancer
as a "survivor"
not "victim"
people pause
to applaud her courage


when a woman writes of motherhood
as a blessing
never a mixed bag, drag, fear or curse
people pause
and trust her authority
and praise her for all the "hard work" such a "noble job" assumes

when a woman writes of heterosexual love
as ideal
but never a case of socially constructed
philanthropy
never as economic necessity nurtured by the fear of God and family
people pause
to worship her
to glorify and befriend her
to market her words and face endlessly

when a woman remains loyal widow
to the relentless ritual slaughter of men and children
and never utter the question of race, class or religion
people pause
to see her as truly "woman-identified"
refusing for her, momentarily at least
title after title: "welfare mom, quota, promiscous, ignorant, lazy"

but

when a woman speaks of anger
speaks anger, forms the words fermented behind her carefully silenced lips

when she dares address the fear-sustained-maggot infested hole
in the center of her chest,
when she puts on display
the expanding shore of a hip, wrist and rib cage
that she has spent a lifetime hurling herself against,

when she attempts to save
this shipwreck of her bodymind
that doctors throw pill after pill at.

She must find herself beyond the words that suggest
they still long for the days that they could simply remove pieces of her
brain
or her uterus or shock her sane or lock her away
put her in her place
put. her. in. her. place.

but should she question all of this
her words become abortions
and her identity takes on aborted shapes
pieces unidentifiable
placed in containers marked:
"discard immediately. toxic waste."

should she do this
her body becomes a vile, defiled space
her anger is named: anything but righteous
her morality is depravity in a world that has no time to hear
let alone comprehend the depth or source
originating and intersecting points
of the tangled roots of her rage.
This simply isn't done. This simply isn't said.

Feminists spelled it out once.

Drug companies swore
under oath
that they alone heard.
that they alone listened.

Trouble is,
They responded with yet another clever way
to leave the woman part womb part doll and part grave
all parts, a prettily prepped and patented

vivisection.

*written to critique the lack of a safe space for or acknowledgement of women's anger and rage. When divorced of her anger and rage she is made less human than the other, more tolerable, emotions allow her. It is all right for her to be sad or anxious because they make pills for that but if she questions the root and dissects from it, the true cause of her depression,
this is unnacceptable. This is EXACTLY what she needs to do. I see this as sort of an evolution of thought beginning with Virginia Woolf's "A Room of her own" to Betty Friedan's "The Feminine Mystique."