I began writing quarterly posts for FAR in July 2012. The poems below are selected from journals kept during these nine years. As indicated, I searched for the words goddess, women, woman. April is poetry month, but I also realize that right now I don’t have any essays in me. Sometime this year, I may embark on my first nonfiction project. In spite of and/or because of that new focus, this post is my last as a regular FAR contributor. I am grateful for having been a reader and writer in this community. Thank you and much love to you all.
I awakened under clouds feeling respite from fierce heat in April that forced maple, birch, beech, and poplar to bud and burst.
First we planted Balsam seedlings; He climbed birch to saw off dying trunks, some broken beyond recognition, wreckage from the ice storm a winter holocaust that stole my peace, my trust in white, deep restful sleep.
Thinking about the discourse between spiritualists and victims of harm Thinking about accountability and prison abolition Thinking about how white supremacy tells us people are disposable That they–that we, don’t matter Thinking about “don’t speak ill of the dead” Thinking about “honor your ancestors” Thinking about what else is possible beyond prisons, cages, and borders Thinking about abusers who refuse to take accountability Thinking about where that leaves us when we die Throat’s closed Stories Untold Thinking about how death is possible for the living Thinking about how redemption is possible for the dead Thinking about, what the fuck even is Salvation, anyway? Thinking about binaries and how exhausting it is to think of these two things as mutually exclusive to each other Thinking about how many of us are dissociating because cognitive dissonance is hell on earth Thinking about the waging of war and how it lives in the body Thinking about how rage turned inwards is depression Thinking about the will to live and the will to die Thinking about the sleep of death and the dreams that come from dying Thinking about regret Thinking about when an abuser becomes an ancestor Thinking about where the guilt goes in the afterlife Thinking about hell Thinking about eternal suffering Thinking about conversations of the reconciliation that is possible between an abusive ancestor and those they’ve abused Thinking about who the hell said this shit was tied to the land of the living
This poem is a birthing after months of sitting in grief circles and bible studies and with the ancestors.This poem is short but holds so many wrestlings. It holds the wrestling between me and my daddy, now an ancestor, who I could never come out to while he walked this earth. It holds the waiting for my biological father’s passing to reconcile the ways in which he harmed me and my mother and my sister, the ways in which he abandoned and neglected us. It holds the wrestlings of iconizing Kobe Bryant after his death while also naming and recognizing him as the sexual predator he was. It holds the wrestlings of what happens in the afterlife, blending theologies of indigeneity and christianity.
I longed to re-visit
the desert – my first
journey left me
with a longing for
wide open spaces,
a blue sky dome,
a bowl of stars at night,
so to return 25 years later
was to complete
an unfinished story.
Now I could live among
the stately rock
stark white columns,
conical reptilian hills,
pink and purple sands,
ragged weeds,
Cactus People,
thorns and stickers,
delicate yellow flowers,
under a moon that rarely slept?
Some nights I missed the dark.
I always missed the Bear
I dismissed the longings
in my body,
Things were different here.
Maybe I could escape
the grief of dying trees,
stripped mountains,
a shrinking wilderness
too many gunmen
the loss of dreams?
That first November
I heard a haunting –
Crane calls
as they touched
down at nightfall.
My bones sang.
How I longed
to meet the bird
whose voice
sent lightening chills
through every nerve.
A fellow college classmate, Diana, and I wrote this poem together as we were inspired by the likes of Adrienne Rich and Sara Ahmed. We wanted to touch on the animosity between trans folk and cis women that often exists between them, and bridge our collective and often shared feelings of joy, rage and injustice into writing. We welcome you to walk the bridge with us.
Pt. 1
What is a woman? A woman can’t satisfy.
Because if she’s not “woman” enough in one aspect or the other she’s not deserving of that title at all.
Gender is a societal construct so I wouldn’t really know how to define a woman.
For many, being a woman means that her brain is in between her legs but how do we persuade them that it’s fucking not?
I know a lot of women who aren’t born with the biology of what a woman is expected to be
I know a lot of women who don’t have breasts, who don’t carry typical reproductive organs within their systems.
Can I recall a time when my resilience surprised me?
My mother always said, “If you feel bad, go out into the garden and eat worms.” Sigh. We didn’t have a garden. My resilience. My head hits the counter, as my father’s hand slams into the back of my head. I am locked in a closet. I am. That would be my mother as I grew up. Kicked up. Weeds grow. They do. What is surprising to me at sixty is not my resilience, but the fact that I never leaned back. Stopped. Being resilient is the inside and out of my blood type—moving through all of my veins. I am surprised if I cut myself there is blood left. But there is. I still bleed.
This is resilience.
Can I recall a time when resistance was the only option?
My father. I am twelve. My best friend is over. I go in the other room with him. I have to. She hears this, my best friend. I resist shame like a knife blade I hold. I leave the room with the blade held out. Shame then holds out a cloak promising me something. A space to hide maybe. I resist. I am in a cold fever. My best friend and I sit; we are watching a documentary on TV. My mother sits behind us. She says to no one, “Things happen at everyone’s house. I bet things happen at your house, too.” My best friend and I say nothing. I resist feeling. On the TV are flamingoes and I will hate flamingoes for the rest of my life.
The papaya, the lemon, the squash.
The everything going bad—not yet.
I can pickle anything I can save—still. And I am never still.
Still…at sixty-four here I am. Rise. This is age—still.
2.
I have a passport to somewhere that does not
exist. As a white skin person with color
roots that do not show. My grandfather could not
have had the chance I have to walk at night
in a white neighborhood and nobody knows who I am,
until they know. And still… I am here. This is race—still.
3.
An ivory castle, an ant hill teeming with fire ants, a
stop sign, the rich woman’s house my grandmother
cleaned, the rich woman was my English teacher. My
father beat me for wanting to go to the Ivy League
school, Sarah Lawrence—I could not want to go
where he did not go. So, I went—to the state school.
But, I went, and I did, and I still…I’m
never still. This is possession.
This is wanting—still.
4.
The dark room without a light. The stars
blink at me to move along. I am less
afraid of a coyote than a man out
with my dog at night walking
it off. Walking off the fear of a pandemic virus.
Walking off the fear of—everything—
where are we headed?
Somewhere.
Walking somewhere – my dog ahead of me,
Her ears pointing. She is…I am
never, ever still.
*
I am a rape survivor many times over, and I survived
to be this woman with a pen. And I am…
never still. Stillness as location.
For this is location—still.
5.
A red apple on the teacher’s desk is never
enough if you are not in the class.
The guy said I wouldn’t get the job at seventeen
because it had to go to a boy even though I
created the job the summer before—
a park director in a dangerous neighborhood that I made
a park because no one wanted it. But I did. And I did.
I knew he was wrong, but it would be twenty years
before the words sexual harassment became a
tool I could use. Because…and still. I am
now. I am never still. This is gender—still.
6.
I am a wave, a crash, a body among bodies
among bodies. I believe in people
fighting for what’s right. My wife and I
got married in 2008 and two days later
the state shut down gay marriage and we
spent our honeymoon protesting.
Her first protest sign,
“When do I get to vote on your marriage?’
*
And here I am. Still. Still protesting this shit, is
a sign I would use later. Still. I am never.
I am never still. And this is relationship—still.
*
It’s a long life, I say to students. A lot can happen.Miles to go before you sleep.
A long road. At sixty-four I think, yes. Maybe yes, it is… A Wonderful Life. And still…
I am never still.
This body I am. This story I am
is to be continued. And still.
For I am never…I am never still.
–Marie Cartier January 9, 2021
With thanks to LA’s Cuties Coffee Shop, Poetry Workshop
Marie Cartier has a Ph.D. in Religion with an emphasis on Women and Religion from Claremont Graduate University. She is the author of the critically acclaimed book Baby, You Are My Religion: Women, Gay Bars, and Theology Before Stonewall (Routledge 2013). She is a senior lecturer in Gender and Women’s Studies and Queer Studies at California State University Northridge, and in Film Studies at Univ. of CA Irvine.
On the path
through the pines
I see clumps of
moss scattered,
an old tree trunk
is raked as if
with claws;
clumps of downed bark
food for the earth.
My heart soars.
Wild hope pours
through me like honey.
Feminism and Religion 