The century grinds on.
— Margaret Atwood
Right from the start, it’s easier to be the father: no morning delivery room and keep your clothes on. Notice how how she is either too strict or too lenient: wrong for giving up for whatever is the matter with all of us while the father the rational one, the one who told a joke at dinner. the lawn while the grill fills with smoke. But who to wear and deliver her to the beauty shop and explain a woman still is? I am supposed to teach her how to her to grow up and be like me. I’d rather be the father and teach her to skip stones across the lake of history;
nausea, no stretch marks. You can wait outside the
closely the word mother resembles smother, notice
everything or not enough. Psychology books blame her
slips into the next room for a beer. I wanted to be
If I were her father we would throw a ball across
wants to be the mother? Who wants to tell her what
bras and tampons? Who wants to show her what
wash the dishes and do the laundry only I don’t want
who tells her she is loved; I’d rather take her fishing
I’d rather show her how far she can spit.
— “I’d Rather be the Father,” Faith Shearin
Some men break your heart in two,
Some men fawn and flatter,
Some men never look at you;
And that clears up the matter.
— Dorothy Parker, “Experience”
(All your life you wait around for some damn man!)
— Dorothy Parker
If No One Ever Marries Me // Natalie Merchant (written by Laurence Alma-Tadema)
If no one ever marries me,— If no one ever marries me I shall have a cottage near a wood, And when I’m getting really old,—
And I don’t see why they should,
For nurse says I’m not pretty,
And I’m seldom very good—
I shan’t mind very much;
I shall buy a squirrel in a cage,
And a little rabbit-hutch:
And a pony all my own,
And a little lamb quite clean and tame,
That I can take to town:
At twenty-eight or nine—
I shall buy a little orphan-girl
And bring her up as mine.
She wants a house full of cups and the ghosts
of last century’s lesbians; I want a spotless
apartment, a fast computer. She wants a woodstove,
three cords of ash, an axe; I want
a clean gas flame. She wants a row of jars:
oats, coriander, thick green oil;
I want nothing to store. She wants pomianders,
linens, baby quilts, scrapbooks. She wants Wellesley
reunions. I want gleaming floorboards, the river’s
reflection. She wants shrimp and sweat and salt;
she wants chocolate. I want a raku bowl,
steam rising from rice. She wants goats,
chickens, children. Feeding and weeping. I want
wind from the river freshening cleared rooms.
She wants birthdays, theaters, flags, peonies.
I want words like lasers. She wants a mother’s
tenderness. Touch ancient as the river.
I want a woman’s wit swift as a fox.
She’s in her city, meeting
her deadline; I’m in my mill village out late
with the dog, listening to the pinging wind bells thinking
of the twelve years of wanting, apart and together.
We’ve kissed all weekend; we want
to drive the hundred miles and try it again.
— Joan Larkin, “Want” (via 30womenwriters)
(Source: afterellen.com, via mythoftheheart)
You are young, so you know everything.
You leap into the boat and begin rowing.
But, listen to me. Without fanfare, without
embarrassment, without any doubt, I talk
directly to your soul. Lift the oars from the
water, let your arms rest, and let your heart,
and heart’s little intelligence, and listen to me.
There is life without love. Its not worth the
body of a dead dog nine days unburied.
When you hear, a mile away, and still out of
sight, the churn of the water as it begins to
swirl and roil, fretting around the sharp
rocks - when you hear that unmistakeable
pounding - when you feel the mist on your
mouth and sense ahead the embattlement,
the long falls plunging and streaming - then
row, row for your life toward it.West Wind by Mary Oliver
Happy 76th birthday, Mary. I love you very, very much.
