Outmate
A spacious cage; free
to move about, pull threaded needles
through cranberry tasks
strung onto life’s limbs
this berry-blood pinprick
the only allotted sharpness for
a chronic plucker of the seed
digging at myself like the
mental patient I want to be.
These cool round totems squaring
the softness, yet
no smug turnkey wears
my fury on his coat;
no rolling greenness outside my window
meticulously plotted with therapeutic intent
no kind words riding surreptitious glances
from friends that I
pretend not to know, because
I know
they’re mine.
As mine as the everydayness of
hyphenated grayness or sun
elongated elements spilling
between the bars.
Stick your hand in.
Pierce the warbling penumbra.
Dare to feed a waiting wildness
see if you’re frightened when I
take you in my teeth or
rub you against
my dully polished almond.
Maybe this dichotomy will offend;
such fierce obsessions layered
beneath a manicured smile.
If you don’t splinter like bone,
or splash like thrown china,
you will emancipate me
and watch us trail the undone string
of niceties, the round red jewels
splatter and roll between the bent bars.
about this piece
In the late mid/late 19th century, our biological sciences had started developing rapidly. But not quickly enough to counter a number of ridiculous theorems-become-facts about women, our intellectual capacity, and especially our emotional stability. Our sanity was called into question simply by virtue of having a strong opinion and wanting to express it. The more it scraped against the prevailing (man’s) point of view, the crazier and more dangerous we were.
Newly-minted medical men found the answer: “The uterus is the culprit!” We couldn’t expect it to be a rational organ, behaving as it did. In my opinion, a body part that can fake its own death every month is diabolically clever. They didn’t see it that way. Similar to removing an aggressive dog’s testicles, medical masterminds began relieving crazy women of their uteruses (uterai?).
Believing this would cure —or at least abate— her hysterics, they called the procedure a hysterectomy. (And in so doing, they removed our only real purpose or value to society, which was making new humans.)
For as much as I love words, I’m not sure why I didn’t study poetry a little more in school. As I began hoovering up everything I could find, there seemed to be a criminally disproportionate number of women writers who were considered ‘crazy’ simply because they addressed taboo subjects like mental health issues, motherhood, and the routine oppression they experienced as artists. Anne Sexton was my particular favorite, and the inspiration for this piece. From there, I found myself devouring the famously-‘crazy’ Emily Dickenson, Sylvia Plath, and Zelda Fitzgerald. Then the parade of not-exactly-crazy but deeply threatening to the male psyche, Virginia Woolf, Charlotte Bronte, Kate Chopin, George Sand, Gertrude Stein, and Mary Wollstonecraft. I followed that thread all the way up to our brilliant contemporaries: the rapier wit of Mary McCarthy (knife so sharp, you don’t even know you’re dead), Alice Walker, Marilyn French, Doris Lessing, Angela Davis, Margaret Atwood, and my all-time favorite and probably most surprised to see herself on this list, Carrie Fisher.
There are soooo many others. And while several —if not all— of them dealt with some degree of mental health issues, time has proven they’re not hysterical. They’re brave, brilliant women who began diagramming our landscape and plotting a course through, and hopefully OUT of these decrepit old stereotypes.