![]() ![]() Happy National Poetry Month! Go read blud. This poem reminds me that to be a woman doesn’t mean just one thing, that it is an open-ended thing. And yet, as a person, I am always aware of my gender and the ways I perform it. It’s not that all of my worries and concerns that led to my panic attack were gendered. It’s not that I was mad that the keynote speaker was male. I’ve been thinking about why this particular poem spoke to me so much during the keynote address. By the end of the poem, she writes, “There isn’t a man alive / who could undo me.” That’s perfect. “What greater burden, what more // unconquerable revolt is there than that / of a resurrected woman?” she asks. “Ripe with vengeance, I termite.” (I swear, that’s probably my favorite line.) She is ready to fight. I move out of the way of things, especially men, coming at me.) And thus the speaker is reborn. (I’ve read that women are more likely to move out of the way than men, but I don’t have scientific studies at hand, so let’s call this anecdotal evidence. (Men can be both.) She is merely taking up space in the world, as a man would, no longer avoiding eye contact or moving out of the way of an approaching man. The speaker rejects this binary of women as nurturers and men as aggressors. She writes, “Now I walk the streets // forcing men into uncomfortable eye / contact: You wanna fuck with me? // I wanna fuck with you.” I don’t know about you, but my initial response to these lines was cheering, followed by some confusion, for doesn’t this mean that she is acting aggressive, like a man? But no. But this guidance is also a thing that seems to come naturally because I am a woman, and maybe that’s worth pondering.Īnyway, the speaker of the poem follows the line about the damaged house by saying, “Better to be the demolition gender.” I have some questions about this: Is that what men are? Is that what women could be? And is demolition by its very nature a negative thing? This line makes me pause every time I see it.Īnyway, the speaker becomes brave and aggressive after her body has been “taken” a third time (and I can only read violence into these lines). ![]() ![]() I struggled in college, often without much guidance. ![]() And I don’t mind it, because that is who I am, and I feel for them. I advise them not to get behind, to break their insurmountable tasks and papers into smaller tasks, to visit the campus counselors, to get regular sleep and healthy food, to think about medication if need be. I’ve been talking with friends lately about how I perform my gender as an instructor at my university, about how students come to my office hours and look for help–and it’s not just with their papers. We are the place where others gather and dwell, the emotional house for your needs. I can’t stop thinking about hammered jewelry, and how it is flattened and shaped into being.) She wanted “the safety of a cock.” She knew “nothing of this body / other than the violence it ignited.” And, she asks, “Who would ever choose to be / the damaged house?” Women are, literally, the things that are inhabited–in heterosexual relationships, by men in childbirth, by babies. The speaker says, “I have always been a god-hammered girl.” (Think about that image. This poem is, in many ways, about taking the circumstances that you have been given–the things that seemingly make you weak–and embracing them, becoming ferocious. I read it again and again, pausing on specific lines (like the last couplet). I thought I might pass out or scream or do something, and I realized I was having a panic attack, so I went into an adjoining room and opened up blud and read this poem, this witchy goddess poem (for “bruja” means “witch” in Spanish). But it wasn’t until a little over a week ago, when I was sitting at a keynote address for a conference, deep in my thoughts about how hard it was to concentrate, and what a ridiculous human being I was, and how embarrassing it is to feel deeply for another person, and how scared I was of my dissertation defense, and how scared I am of my student loans, that I really appreciated blud. Rachel McKibbens, from blud (Copper Canyon Press, 2017)Ī few months ago, I first started seeing Rachel McKibbens’ poems circulating among poetry twitter*, and I made a note to get blud, because each new line stunned me. Riddled my tongue with a father’s profanity. When I was young, I kissed the girls too hard, Mother thinned down to a milkless shadow. The last, of course-this cauldron of a cunt. The wet unfolding of my arms, legs & fists. ![]()
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