irreme seshat

2007-05-06T12:01:00.001-07:00

Oppression is not a Competition

I say, to a white man on stage,
rhyming about his suffering.

What i wanted
to say was: "the sea has no steps
like pain has no degrees,"
but it has been used before
to color sameness,

and this is not
what i mean.
But the man on stage
wants to lighten the mood,
get some attention, so
he says: "You girls, don't
work at Hooters, do ya?"
to me in the front.

No more will i play
silently the tune of your distraction.
But neither can i carve
up my identity in notches.

I've heard them. Seen their
effects on highschool, college
boys in Colorado, Virginia...
hunting women, shooting up life.

What can i tell you, but
we must find a different path
then this one, of notches
and belts serving as bullets
and rope.

2007-02-11T17:25:00.000-08:00

i never knew the color of your eyes,

mistaking them for mirrors,
i got lost in the mazes and corridors
which bridge-like led me
never straight but always forward
directly to an indescribable place

if it is indescribable why do you say it?
why do you hold me like a flag, raise me
in battle, who are you fighting (for)?

a dead self. indescribable because unknowable—
open. You had said once. Every word you knew of
love. It was not enough. They fluttered

out into the void.

2007-01-09T12:27:00.000-08:00

fear: i have to stop thinking of sadness and floating.
i am trembling worse than a leaf. i know this state.

my love: what is love? i keep thiking, but all i know is difference and similarity, both. stay. don’t make any sacrifices. i had plugged my mouth but you de-gag me.
gag me. i know there can be no ending. but death.
Funny, morbid.

suffer: i had tried to leave you, but i leave a trail. you are the trail. joy pales in reflection. i laugh at myself, too rarely, too futilely, too slyly…

i am too much here. in your eyes i leave a shadow. perhaps it is of joy, but…what is tomorrow? i am…and you.

Without Tomorrow

2006-12-26T09:29:00.000-08:00

This is the cover of my first "zine." If you want a copy, click on the email link and put zine in the subject of your email. We'll go from there. All the photos in it are unphotoshoped photographs i took this summer in France.
Merry Holidays! Hugs.

wall-friends

2006-10-11T15:08:00.000-07:00

a penny for translation

2006-08-27T21:29:00.000-07:00

Practicing Theory

2006-08-13T09:18:00.000-07:00

This is the talk i gave at MTSU on an activism/ business ethics panel, where i also got to debate one of my first "phil. teachers," Michael Principe.

When I asked Jason Bell what he wanted me to talk about for this panel, he said two words that I have been thinking about pretty much non stop: theory and practice. What is the relationship between theory and practice? Is it really as simple as we think? Does “theory” “cause practice?” If I attempt to answer these questions philosophically, I would already be privileging one of the terms. So, instead, I’m going to turn to the “philosophy” of a group called the CIW, which stands for Coalition of Immokalee Workers, since my work with them to “boot” Taco Bell off this campus was one of the reasons Jason asked me to speak here.
The CIW identifies as a “community-based worker organization” whose “members are largely Latino, Haitian, and Mayan Indian immigrants working in low-wage jobs in Florida.” I bet before I said Florida, some of you were thinking to yourselves: what does Immokalee, Latino and Haitian immigrants have to do with me? What does it have to do with business ethics? Well, it has everything to do with business ethics—and with everyone of us—because we eat.
There is a striking statement that Laura Germino, a CIW organizer, once made that I’ll never forget. She said: “slavery is what’s for breakfast.” I think Americans assume that slavery is this thing that has been over for decades, that it doesn’t go on here anymore, may be in some other “less developed, less democratic” countries, but not here, not now! (Is that what you think? Let’s see: who here thinks that slavery is happening right here in this country and we are benefiting from it?) Part of the CIW’s work has been precisely to expose “modern day slavery.” Of course slavery today is different because it is no longer legal, but that doesn’t mean that isn’t still institutional. In the past seven years, the CIW has played a key role in discovering, investigating and prosecuting five cases of modern slavery. In 2002, three crew leaders in FL were convicted of forcing 700 workers into slave labor in Florida’s citrus groves.
There are so many important things that I could tell you about the CIW’s work, but let me back up and talk about how I got involved with them. It was really so simple…I have a friend who was a member of Solidarity here, and he said to me and another of our friends: Hey, I hear there’s a cool organizing group in Florida who are boycotting Taco Bell, and they are having an informational food summit for Thanksgiving. Want to go? An informational food summit just meant that the CIW had put out an invitation on the website that said: come to us, we’ll feed you and house you, and you can learn about what we do. So we got in the car and drove to Immokalee, Florida. Some people say that there is a revolutionary moment, well I don’t know about that, but what I saw in Florida certainly changed the way I live. I often hear that so many people do nothing about the injustice all around them because they feel powerless, because they don’t believe they can have any “real” effect. But I think that has more to do with what they think an “effect” is. In a culture governed by consumerism, the standard for effectiveness becomes immediacy. So people think that if they can’t end all injustice now by themselves, what’s the point of trying? Real change takes time and effort. Here is the CIW’s formulation I promised you earlier, that I think sums up what I’ve been saying here:
Consciousness + Commitment = Change
That’s pretty straightforward, isn’t it? [Can somebody tell me what you think consciousness means?] I would formulate it like this: Consciousness means awareness, it means not blinding yourself with television so well that you can’t see that the janitors who clean up your university don’t make enough to support their families, for example. [What about commitment, who would like to give a definition?] Commitment means work, not doing something once, or twice, but incorporating action for justice into your daily life. Consciousness and commitment must interact, one doesn’t follow the other, you don’t learn everything first and then act as an all knowing being making no mistakes. No. You learn a little about a problem and you try to do what you can, let other people know about it, for example, then you learn more, then you act more and eventually things do change. I think one of the problems in an individualist society such as ours, is that we all have a hero complex. What I mean, is that we have designated super heroes and the rest of us can sit back and watch them act. But every change in history has happened because many people were committed to bringing it about. (For example: civil rights, etc.)
With this philosophy, if I may call it that, the CIW has accomplished unprecedented change for tomato pickers. On March 8, 2005 Taco Bell, owned by Yum Brands, who also owns KFC, Pizza Hut, A&W, and Long John Silvers signed an agreement with the CIW to pay a penny more per pound of tomatoes. This means a more than 50% increase in wages for tomato pickers who have not received a raise in over 20 years; Yum also agreed to insure that this increase gets passed directly to the tomato pickers, to develop a code of conduct with the CIW, and to help get other fast food giants to do the same thing. Taco Bell agreed to all of the CIW’s demands. This is the world’s largest restaurant chain agreeing to the demands of migrant workers and students. Jonathan Blum, a senior vise-president of Yum also said that [and I quote]: under Taco Bell’s new labor rules “indentured servitude by suppliers is strictly forbidden.” This is from an article in the New York Times, where the author goes on to say that: “The need for a corporate edict against slavery in the U.S reveals just how bad things have become for farm workers.”
So, how did the CIW achieve this kind of change? The CIW began organizing in 1993 as tiny group of workers who met in a borrowed room and talked about how to better their lives. That’s thirteen years of hard non-stop work by many people, workers and students. The boycott of Taco Bell began in 2001, after the CIW had already done tremendous work to improve wages and conditions for farm-workers, when a business report named Taco Bell as a major buyer of Florida tomatoes. The boycott lasted for four years, during which Taco Bell refused to speak to the CIW at all, and when they did comment on the issue to the media, they simply said that the condition of farm-workers wasn’t their problem because they weren’t farmers. Well, it became their problem, increasingly because CIW’s boycott included a hunger strike in front of Taco Bell’s headquarters of over 75 workers and students, and the “boot the bell” campaign, where students demanded that Taco Bell be kicked off college campuses.
The CIW never doubted their success. We always knew that we were going to win for a simple reason: because we were not going to give up. We were committed from the start to keep going until we won, so our victory was a matter of time. And this commitment helped our resolve every step of the way. I think that Taco Bell understood that too, which is why they gave in.
So what I want to say about theory and action here, is that we don’t have to know the relationship between them in advance, which is a large and important question, and one which can only be elaborated in a way that facilitates change through engagement with both of them. We can’t wait for others to tell us how to think, nor can we wait to understand everything before we act. It is our constant responsibility to think and act, and change does come about slowly and often painfully as a result of both theory and action. I’m going to end with a formulation of a thought that I have not had time to talk about here, but that I think is another vital piece of change: “If your revolution has no space for dancing, I don’t want any part of it.”

2006-07-20T14:28:00.000-07:00

Oh, this shit hole only called paris
ok, ok, so i've been meaning and trying to tell you about it the whole time i've been here, but, it's, hard. Fact 1: EVERYBODY in paris smokes. when i told my mother this, she said: "oh, well, it IS your city!" and oh, yes, it's the city i was born in and the city i will die in and at every moment it reminds me of that, always whispering whereever i go: i am the city you have always been. how can i possibly explain this non-sense? every baby carriege has smoke coming out of it! when i still used to (try) to ask if i could smoke people would look at me like i'm dumb (which is true). i spent noon to three at the er yesterday (cause i got overheated and freaked out a bit) and we would sneak cigarettes in the waiting room! it was too funny. everybody here makes me think of my brothers and sisters and lovers. it's the oddest (and the most "natural" whatever the fuck that means) thing.
i didn't sleep a wink the six hours on air-india cause i was too excited. i didn't talk to anybody either (i usually don't on planes). i just anticipated, and anticipated. then i almost died of heat at the airport (who'd put airconditioning at an airport! not the french. they've never heard of it. [tell it to hegel!]) and i realized then that i didn't even know how to say "WATER." that's a problem.
for the first 2 nights i stayed in this tiny (virtually everything is in miniature here) hotel, at the top floor. it was in a posh, posh centerish area (paris is not big, so everything seems like the center to me), so i was charmed despite the fact that my room contained no air and half a ceiling. it did have a tiny brown desk, so after wondering paris like a somnambulist (yeah, it's a cheap shot!), i sat in my room happy as a clam typing away and drinking cheap wine. oh, and yes, we all drink day noon night, and wine and beer are never more expensive than coffee, tea, juice or water (so why not?). but, ah, i can't communicate with people. yeah, SOME parisians speak english, but most won't unless they think it'll get them laid (and i'm not usually into encouraging such assumptions). i cried at lunch the first day cause i was convinced the waiter was making fun of me to the other guests...service people are so mean i wouldn't go to restaraunts alone even if i could afford it. and perhaps i'd be too. paris IS overrun by tourists like lice. i went to the louvre for the first time after passing it from my airport shuttle in utter wonder after the er, cencierly expecting that at least there the tourists wouldn't be running like maggots. ha! you smile at my innocence, but i thought "ART" at least evokes SOME patience, no, no, no. more later love
ps. crackerjack comments always inspire me to post sooner cause it's the only way i really know you care (read:read).

CAPITALISM IS TERRORISM

2006-07-14T07:14:00.000-07:00

to dad, with love

beyond the wall? (one is never too short)

2006-07-09T17:00:00.000-07:00

medusa's eyes, and mine

2006-07-09T16:51:00.000-07:00

Saphire Eye/
Gift of Myself

i got a gift, what day-a gift!
a spark of olds and news: a phenix
i got a gift-open reach
listen: the gift-a gift-myself

dead-lost, here i am new shine
breathing in every direction
how can you give me
to myself? Having

never met, we meet in a maze of velvet
and you ask: where
can i buy your hair? so

i take it of-the air! and give-
take it, without money-
no exchange

you pull out a small thing
from a box by its tail-
broken medusa

telling me: you must fix, keep
and cherish this/you/me

what do i know?
my sapphire-may seeing eye-my glass heart.

Israel, will you not end the hand of trauma until you spark the third world war?

2006-07-09T11:27:00.000-07:00

CJ: Louisville, Gay Pride

2006-07-06T14:48:00.000-07:00

Queen + Queen does a Queendom make.

2006-07-05T16:30:00.000-07:00

There is nothing better than dancing with a queen. It is not only the attention, it is rather the quality than the quantity of the attention. The latter, generally unfortunately, never poses a problem for "attractive" women, but the quality is always an issue. When she dances with a queen, she feels herself queen, experiencing queendom with a queen in an undeniable way--before others. It is one thing to be a queen, another to know you are, another to know others, and finally, another to be seen with a queen. A queen plus a queen does a queendom make. She thinks so. The attention has the proper quality of awe.

"Have any girls come up to you yet?" asks Joe[?]. Poor me, she thinks: "Girls don't do that." She says that as a dare to be proven wrong. Tonight. Sometimes it is, but in comparison with "men," it is as if they didn't. The numbers are bad. What is the point of comparison? There's only one: jealousy, and hence pity for herself. How many days has it been? she thinks, since I have been...held, touched by a touch that is asking and asks nothing. She always wants this, which is seldom there, on any part. She does not remember.
Irreme turns, and looses herself in the crowd, just to see. "Smile," she reminds herself, "look people in the eye, if you want to meet someone. Stop holding your head down out of fear. You cannot only be afraid of violence and too persistent men." She finds the one corner unlike a sardine can, and catches the music like the wind. She starts dancing as she moves past people and she smiles, into a queen's sparkling eyes. She is very small and she is wearing an old out of shape or perfectly shaped cowboy hat, low over her eyes. Her long blond hair hides the countours of her face, and the smile that shines past the veils is beaming. As she soon notices, it is beaming with intoxication. Intoxication is not
a judgment. People can smile into each other. People can smile into each other's eyes, which is also smiling into each other's faces. It happens like an accident, but it isn't. And then something is left. An impression. A trace. Alehandra!(That's right, girl, RRRoll that r like it was yourrs.) Say it to yourself, and you hear the royal h like applause. Say it in a queen's smooth and raspy voice and you are seduced.
"She beckons and i cannot look around to check if it is me she beckons. I know it is because i feel the spark of her eyes in mine. I come, carried by it." Alehandra keeps dancing and smiling into Irreme, and Irreme follows. Then she leads and follows. She wants to do it simultaneously, but she must admit she is not practiced enough. So few people know how to lead and follow in one breath. To do so would be to follow a way, perhaps. Not a direction, but a way. Abstraction is not a solution, but an inspiration. Irreme dances with a queen, Alehandra, every moment of which is a true event. There are no technicalities in movement.
This story has certainly not ended.

2006-06-24T14:09:00.000-07:00

The past is lost
The future is empty
The present is too painful to bear.

You are gone
and I
must carry the world.

ky

2006-06-15T12:31:00.000-07:00

i'm sitting happy in louisville, feeling like i've walked 500 miles to get to a corner to myself. ryan and amy are leaving me their cozy studio downtown while they go off to bonaroo, with my old friend lily for company. everything i need, and nothing. i'm so glad to see lily doing well--beautiful calm and playful--at her seven years! i left lou in nashville with my mother. being on the road with lou the night i left memphis was penible in the infinitive! lou screamed for three hours and it was difficult to deny i was torturing him.
the day we got to mom's, before i woke up, she went out and bought him a real harness and the kind of leash stupid me thought only rich dogs had (the long kind with a button to shorten it), and girl, is it great! lou loves it and my siberian love also adores mother's cold place. in memphis, where we were not allowed to use air conditioning (so i moved and packed for a week in 90 degree weather) he kept trying to crawl into the fridge, and never got near a bed in the summer (too hot). whereas at mom's, besides the walks (she takes him on a long walk every morning) lou wouldn't get off the bed all day. slept for a week, lucky bastard!
next stop: chicago. day of expected arrival: sunday
i'll be staying with Brookney at first.
write me, i miss you and love you!!!

what my mama gives for dinner

2006-06-12T22:52:00.000-07:00

move over apply pie crab cakes, we've got crab roast and no-yeast caviar sandwiches. did you know there's black and red and yellow caviar, too? i didn't know there was yellow. i think it's like the stuff they put on inside out california rolls in fancy restys, called something that starts with an m? i love my mothers food and i've needed its root tastes. today jen and bee forced me to take "wellness" vitamins: stinky horse pills, but i got tequila and strawberries to wash it down with.
yesterday, mom and i made fava beans with garlic relish and tomatoes, and a really russian salad with radishes, green and white onions, and a white olive butter dressing. we also had rice with seaweed. eggplants are called bluies in russian: cinenkiye (pl.)
mom's unemployment got cut off last week. the person who knows the taste of caviar has eaten it off trash can lids in alleyways.

Things we need to know to respect gender diversity:

2006-05-11T13:07:00.000-07:00

The subject of gender is going through a lot of changes now. The way we speak reflects what we think and affects how people react to us. There are rapidly growing transgender and “gender queer” communities, gaining visibility in this country after a history of oppression. Lets start with some current definitions, remembering that definitions can and do change. Not everyone has the same definitions, but this is how the following terms are generally used. If this sounds a bit confusing, just remember: it is OK to ask questions regarding terms you don’t know, while being polite and knowing that some people may be uncomfortable by certain questions, and that you always have resources on the internet at your fingertips, and in print.

Starting with the basics: “Men, women and the rest of us”
The word “gender” was brought into use by feminist sociologists to show that sex does not determine who a person can be. Gender has been defined as the social aspects of “biological sex.” How many genders are there? Perhaps as many as there are people. But most people think there are only two: men and women. Transgender is sometimes considered to be a third gender (more on this below).
However, recent research has shown (see biologist Anne Fausto-Sterling) that there are more than two sexes. A significant percent of the population is born with a mixture of “biological” sexual characteristic of both men and women. These individuals identify as intersexual people (previously the term was hermaphrodite, which has been rejected, like the term handicapped).

Transgender: is a relatively new, safe word. It is known as an umbrella term, which like an “umbrella organization” includes other terms in it. So, when we say human beings, that includes men, women, and “the rest of us” to use Kate Bornstein’s phrase. Kate Bornstein, a transgender writer, argues that transgender is a third gender. Transgender is a word that has been adopted for a wide movement of people who do not fit gender stereotypes. It can include but is not limited to gender queers, transsexuals, crossdressers, drag queens and kings, intersexual people, etc.
Some people use transgender as an identity category. Exactly what this means varies, but someone may say: I am transgender, without identifying with a further subcategory. While others who identify as transgender may also identify as any of the following categories.

Transsexual: Generally, transsexual people are those who live as a gender (and sex in many cases) other than the one they were assigned to. Previously, transsexual individuals were sometimes described as: pre-operative (pre-op) and post-operative, referring to “sexual reassignment surgery,” or “bottom surgery.” However, these categories are often criticized because not all transsexuals want this surgery, and many do not have access to it. (It generally costs between 10 and 20 thousand dollars and has restrictive legal requirements.) Therefore questions about surgery are in most cases not appropriate.

MTF: stands for Male to Female, but like other acronyms, MTF has become a word of its own. It is generally used for transgender and/or transsexual people.
FTM: as above, this new word comes from the acronym Female to Male, but it is better to say “FTM” than “Female to Male.”

Crossdresser/ Transvestite: People who enjoy dressing as a gender other than the one they were assigned to, but usually identify as the gender they were assigned to.

Communication:
Because our society makes life for transgender people very difficult most of the time, it is necessary to treat them with respect and politeness in order to establish dialogue. Most transgender people have a preferred pronoun and feel invalidated when someone uses the “wrong” pronoun. If you don’t know what pronoun to use, it is appropriate to ask politely, without making it a spectacle: “what pronoun do you prefer?” Most people pick he or she, but some people use “they,” “ze” or others.
Some transgender people may identify as women, or men, while others prefer trans-women, or trans-men, or none of these. These terms have can have a huge impact on people because of the violence against non-normative gender people. Questions about surgery are not appropriate in most cases, unless the person brings it up themselves. Neither are questions regarding “what’s really in your pants?”
Gender identity does not involve sexuality, i.e. whether a person is gay, straight, bisexual, or queer. Some transgender individuals identify as gay, or queer, while others do not.

Resources:
There are multiple organizations and resources for transgender individuals. Here is just a couple of examples:

There is a new Memphis group called Perpetual Transition. Some of the members are students, and they meet at the MGLCC.

TransFamily is a support and information organization who have a website and are offiliated with PFLAG, a support organization for LGBTQ family and friends.
http://www.transfamily.org/gendr101.htm

Transgender Forum’s Community Center is a website providing links and further info.
http://www.transgender.org/

Go France! Wake up America!

2006-03-28T08:33:00.000-08:00

frag

2006-03-25T02:00:00.000-08:00

but the night is too beautiful for history. make way!
it calls, for me. but there is no time.

with her pinked glove, she reaches out, barely
whispering: name! name me. i say she says.

give me back which you have taken to carry
inside you, the connection she searches. reaches.

give me back an innocence i have given.

no

2006-03-22T23:24:00.000-08:00

accomplishment is all there is. all that remains yours. except of course that it doesn’t, and it stinks, all of its own. i am talking to walls.
today is another day when i hear him cursing like he wasn’t a memory: every day i wish it was over before i have left the bed i think about this an(other) day of treachury. any day is as good, and i never know in advance which day it is.
other is the unbearable death. that is the death that must be thought through, lived through. your own death is only a ghost.
she is sweet and lovely and i love her too much to bear. i told her she was mean and uncaring, today, i felt it then, but at the same time all the other but i only said the one because…i don’t know.
i know there’s no forgiveness and nothing to forgive for.

More goings on here in the south--Sunday!

2006-03-17T13:19:00.000-08:00

Sunday, March 19
March for Peace Justice and Democracy
Gather 1:00pm, First Congregational Church
March through Midtown to Overton Park
Rally for Peace and Justice - 2:00pm Veterans Plaza, Overton Park

End the Occupation
from Iraq to Afganistan

Bring the Troops Home NOW

From Iraq to New Orleans
Fund Peoples Needs - Not the War Machine

Goings on in Memphis--Tonight!

2006-03-16T09:25:00.000-08:00

Eyes Wide Open: The Human Cost of War
An exhibit that speaks and reminds us of the human cost of war.
March 15- 21, 10am- 6pm
First Congregational Church, 1000 S. Cooper

Opening Forum:
State of the City: The REAL Human Cost of War
Thursday March 16, 7:00pm
First Congregational Chuech, 1000 S. Cooper
A forum that looks at the costs of war that extend beyond the war on Iraq to the war on the poor here at home.

Eyes Wide Open: National Guard Memorial is over 350 pairs of boots tagged with the names of National Guard soldiers who have died in the Iraq war. They are displayed together with a visual representation of the thousands of Iraqi civilians that have died in the war.

2006-03-13T22:57:00.000-08:00

She dared, she tried, and as she lay, her
friends said that “at least she tried,” dying,
her faceless shadow deformend by its effort.

all this is about a letter. a just letter. just
a letter. but justice isn’t enough. justice is not
what they were looking for. they were

looking for…you guessed it! you get it—
the prize.

so she layed there dying, too tired to breathe
too naked to open her eyes, she layed in the place
she had leaped into arms thrown back like a, well,

a mummy is surely not the right figure, a monster
isn’t quite what she was thinking of, but there
was a monster, the way they sneak up on you!

she prayed to the unknown, thinking of her fellow
evangelist anarchists, vegans, egnostics,
the whole queer army! passed behind her faceless shadow,

like the w/hole that was never there. like the breath
she forget to whisper like a home she would never fly
from/with/out on, she shot out into the air

finally on the skates like the ones that skate in hell
freezing in a moment before smashing the canon like
a bad skin she no
longer
wanted.

she was stoned and came down hard. beside herself.
beneath the ground. she let out

2006-02-28T09:13:00.000-08:00

Missing Moments

what renders missing moments worth it? why
do we let them go, fleeting scintillations set off…
what goes with them? what do they fleet away?

work. and Don’t Play. and more importantly:
Don’t Fuck (not any time except what is allotted
after dark; mechanically upon exhaustion).

still stricter dictum reads: Do Not Enjoy
not joy, desire—yes! salivate, buy
be entertained (just not in joy).

yet more importantly: never love more
than yourself, you job, autonomy, your
privilege is yours alone because

You Earned it! work and work and gain,
accumulate, accrue, get rich—entrepreneur!
Compete, deceive, whatever works
whatever brings your individual its own success

will sanction this morality. Whoever dares
to disobey these dictums will be cast:
a Marxist, Feminist, a Queer—cast out

on the ship of fools—raped, robbed
confined and silenced—Blackened,
burned and what’s at stake

but life, self-preservation, moral law
insidious and cunning signs on all
the doors of offices including those

we elevate as substitutes for all
of which we’re robbed: the moments,
missing moments.

2006-02-24T09:40:00.000-08:00

This was my favorite!:
LaDelle McWhorter (University of Richmond)
Queering Hitler: The Repudiation of Racism in Post-War America

2006-02-16T10:09:00.000-08:00

2. revolutionary suicide

on the unspeakable ships—those
floating mass graves—do I have
the right to speak? of them? who
will give me license or sustenance?

a jew? on the unspeakable trains—those
thundering transports to mass graves coming
from showerheads hissing like promises…

the stamp in my passport (mine!): nationality:
jewish. a license to grieve? was it born with me,
or like the stamp in my passport, did I acquire it
by growing wonder? I open my heart and it leaps

out. to get back to the ships and the ghosts,
“we evolved from ghosts.” there was a woman. a man,
a child, tossed overboard. those whose names have been
drowned, leaped, souls into the water—an act of courage—

sharks traveled guarding the sides of the ships, knowing
the feeding would come regularly as the dead, the sick,
and the old were discarded at noon when they came

on deck for one hour a day and were sprayed with
hoses to wash off fiecies, piss, vomit in which they
lived, twenty-three hours a day

for three months to America!

selections happened twice a day as they lined up
before and after work and the officers separated
the sick and the old

from the rest and led them, too tired to do anything
but follow, to showering gas. quietly, sometimes, they took
off their clothes….

--instead of escape. can you imagine—a suicide
as an act of courage, and not an escape?

when Sethe chopped Beloved’s head off, that
two year old neck, instead of letting her baby’s
legs be counted, incapable of allowing her daughter
to become a slave, killing the innocence of herself

what name are we prepared to give her act?
can you imagine infanticide, as an act
of resistance, and not murder?

or, is it suicide, the final act of blame?

2006-02-08T12:38:00.000-08:00

letter: moribund parricide
(a dying, forceless act of killing the father or something close to it)

it is hard to talk about self-referrentiality without being cute. it is hard to talk without being cute. it is hard to talk. but being cute is not such a bad thing after all? or is it? the permanent mark of priviledge. ha, ha. no. but a lasting one. priviledge is nothing but a mark. what is something but a mark? i am, you say. and, pray, explain to me who “you” is, are, may be? no, hon, not you. but i. should tell you if i could, perhaps, that i am no one. not one. not anymore. nor two nor three. i am not, without hope, after all, without fantasy i am not much. only a trace in a glass of cherry the guest left, leaves. always
with love
Irreme Seshat

2006-02-08T12:37:00.000-08:00

In the absence of genius

so what of it that i still struggle? i will go on
struggling. struggling living. “life is that
which is capable
of error.”
I like this presence
and that absence.
I fulminate in words foam mouth
blankness
pervades the crevices where life moves like
a warm worm a theme in the glass. Oxymoronic Gibbrish.
he called my first, my last attempts.
and i believe it. so what
that i go on and question, my right to speak. my right.

but am i right to speak?

so what if something’s lacking, missing, i am
that someone i know well whose presence, absence
hangs dead in the water,
i'm afraid that if i keep this place i will become it.
stuck in place. keep on screaming: wake up!
and nothing moves. perhaps fear is
we’re stuck. all here. in place
of living, thinking, loving, moving… dance
and know my breath is not a state.

muse..

2006-01-19T09:59:00.001-08:00

perhaps it does not matter enough that i have said nothing here since last year (that wasn't so long ago, remember?) the following is one piece from a collection i tried to put together this summer. i gave up because i couldn't make the pieces fit together. i am planning on disregarding this problem so'as to put out that amalgamation with my friend's lovely work very soon. so any comments, would be particularly appreciated.
I looked at Julia Serano's work recently and it is neat, neat, neat. Check it out at her webcite.
hugs

1 A pair: In the lives of suicides.

2006-01-19T09:59:00.000-08:00

she, the bird who let her feathers my hand
they told me i would outgrow her but i never
had wished but to evoke a bit of honesty like
hers was gas inside her car in the garage
at fifty something? having finally been left

by that double, with whom she sat
in bars and coffee shops, restaurants and
of course most importantly the basement

where they learned that yes they could

be poets; putting ashtrays in their shoes,
they talked about the suicide
that they would take inside them
like a pledge of the impossible.

Did Sylvia have any notion, then,
she would be dead in
two months after they had made a pact that

finally here in their lives they would stop
the wish to end their part. but Ann, Sylvia,
Virginia, Marina…
couldn’t, wouldn’t, didn’t? Does it matter?
Yes. i think it does. So Sylvia was first to break
the pact the pair of them had made, and stuck her head

into the oven, hissing gas, louder
than voice or silently like words put
down, and Ann was angry, saying that
she stole her suicide. But stealing, did she still
her life?

tenuous

2005-12-29T23:21:00.000-08:00

In that horror of impurity, defeat, I have died
rejecting the promise with the premise.
In the horror of purity, deciept, i have died
chocking on one of my own bones.
In this impunity, horror, like a sheet
of whiteness comes with its fresh scent
of death where i wait like a child in a corner
punished to death.
I am more
than you imagined. Where the word
broke with the finger you stepped on, i am alive
beneath the crack; living a death you never
foresaw.
When you feel me under you boot, you slip.
Who do you think i am talking to. About. Certainly not with.
Talking with does not happen in accusations, which
are a last .

Once there was a promise of fit in a white dress.
I hung it
on
a blue hanger tighter than a noose it seemed.
The swan neck of the hanger promised great sorrow. I saw it
pass me under over against and through like a woman speared, through the
back
of her legs.
I waited under the train where the music had passed. They say
there is no thread between paganism and religion, mysticism and philosophy
judaism and communism, they say there is no coinsedense between
quantum and structure, but

2005-12-16T10:08:00.000-08:00

I am that dream that enters
you like a death
without ...
I am
existence without certainty
I am the crossed limit, the boundary
blurred at the edges
the script erasing itself, the
page crumbling like dry leaf—
what is dry has once been sweat
and all the other fluids
painstakingly washed away
but never with full success,
without a trace,
I am the face you had lost
in the moments before the mirror
when the person there was no longer
comparable, almost identifiable,
except by its singularity, or what
vulgarity calls uniqueness.
I am the moment
outside of cessation, I am
the break of the pause I am
who you await each day like
a faithful dog (have you begun
do be insulted,
or were you so already marked?)
I am the force you resist
I am the dirt gathering war
under my fingers nail biting
promise of failure I am the life
you refuse.

2005-12-05T09:35:00.000-08:00

i have examined these intersecting lines perennially
like an obsessed accountant checking the figures unable
to stop knowing the transaction has passed.

this cheap simile runs like a hamster in a wheel because
it is the only way to move, although no change of position
comes of it. hanging in this place with no ropes i am a piñata;
come and burst me open with a stick.

every day the same argument: is this enough? one may be for
every seven no’s; and then the same train: so what if it isn’t,
this is all there is. this is all there is. my work is to erase

the traces i have made of this conversation. you laugh to
yourself, over me, you say, well, clearly this is why you
repeat yourself: due to forgetting. my friend, how easy it is
for you to say.

you see, i keep the record, as i’ve already said. Stop
being so vague! Ah, but the details are worn through
like all the boundaries i have worked to undo. Again,
you say: you see, you have made it so.

You are a lying…but i hate all the insults. None are good
enough, none bad…i am kind, it is the world that isn’t;
and if it is the last thing i do, i will not leave my kindness
as a gone-by childhood. And I am NOT a masochist,

do you hear me? I didn’t ask for this pain, awareness
is not always complicity.

2005-11-28T11:06:00.000-08:00

I brace myself against this friendship.

She braces herself against her voice
Ringing with death. Enumerating atrocities

standing at the rail between us

how much sweeter is a sleep than a fuck?

i ask you this today to ask more important
questions tomorrow. i know you will frown
in response, and say you have to pee, you need tea,

tired of being a spectacle we withdraw into
shells made of paraffin we cannot breathe through.

am i braking myself in order to survive this
friendship? oh, lover, how cruel it is to leave me

breathless.
and then you want to read what i have written
and because i skulk away in shame, you think
i have been silent. but you are wrong my dear,
i cannot stop speaking of and to you, along the broken
lines i send my intentions against your deft response.

2005-11-24T19:27:00.000-08:00

Unprepared...I appreciate that you view this blog and it would be oh, so... if you would also respond. Tomorrow I will repeat myself differently. I would so much like to learn more about the history of "Thanksgiving" and the alternative Native American holidays that have been advocated for this day.
Tomorrow, that's right, the FRIDAY after "Thanksgiving" is BUY Nothing Day
Please, give the consumption a rest and do something creative instead! Irreme with love

2005-11-21T09:07:00.000-08:00

Oh my friend, there are no friends.
The mouth avers intention
Like nothing else. So what if this voice
Makes me cry every time like a little girl,
A little girl buried. Beneath my skin,
A little girl buried grief like a line no
Forgetting re-members.
Sweet friend, i have no voice with you.
No self where a self is intended, still
I have nothing to for-give. You
Refuse my needs like a stranger. Reason
Is not a pretense between us.
The future is the cat under the house,
Drowning. Fear talking.
The future is the only thing it cannot be:
Itself. I tell myself it must be this way
So’s better to bare it with. I will not bear
Your death. I have made that decision.
And you need not know.

Enough with this death already! I have something to
Live, something to give, and the dead do not accept gifts,
Do they? Who says? Who decides?
If it’s me, I cannot say. If it’s Kant, then fuck philosophy.
A dead man’s weight, of echoing questions.

memory two

2005-11-11T13:07:00.000-08:00

To begin with, anyone who writes in the first person is a fool. I’ve always liked fool’s proximity to fullness. I am raw around the edges, especially where she had entered. The omnipresent she; mother? i would like not to think, so.
I was having a conversation with several friends just now. Hurt and full of love, i realized today that fighting may be worthless except for its own sake. I do experience the imposition of goals as violent. What is violence to someone who has never been raped; what is it to those who have? Raped, been raped. Some say the two are closer than we think. I prefer not to. Don’t you?
Who are you, my friend, oh my friend, there are no friends,
said some stupid guy whose name evokes power. My name...
Every time i hear the name (?) Jesus i know i’m in the wrong place. I am an anachronism—me rather than jesus because i hear the name often and repetition is validation here.

memory

2005-11-10T13:07:00.000-08:00

If memory is what holds reality together like glue, and schizophrenia is a kind of forgetting... that allows us to see into other worlds, be in other worlds by forgetting the limit? But forgetting is dangerous.
The establishment enforces, polices its limits. There are limits! Scream the norms in chorus.
Schizophrenia, a loss of memory and a different remembering. A forgetting that is a re-membering. Am I into/o deep? That’s a lyric.

Response to Oppressive Radio, aka Progressive Radio

2005-10-19T10:20:00.000-07:00

Dear Leon,

I am struck by the words of hatred I heard from “progressive radio,” a place I had thought was intended to counter verbal abuse heard on right wing talk shows. Would you put your body where your mouth is? That is, would you demonstrate your hate by going to gay-bashing rallies, committing physical violence against people you decide are “gay?” I do not doubt you are saying, “No!” I would do no such thing. Then what makes you think spreading hatred and verbal violence on the radio (progressive radio!) is different? The road from speech to action is oh, so narrow. By telling people “sexual orientation” is the wrong “choice” you sanction physical violence committed by others, using the power of the word to spread hatred. Hatred gives rise to violence. I am deeply saddened and outraged by your abuse of “progressive radio.” This scandal has forced me to decide that “progressive” radio is exactly the same as right-wing hate radio. I will not listen to your show again until you commit to apologize to everyone whose life you have made just a little more unlivable by spreading hateful fantasies at a time when we need to come together to help victims of bad decisions made by this administration. Your hatred supports and mimics Bush by sowing division among the people who would stand together to oppose this regime. Take off your democrat mask.

Sincerely grieved by your destruction of solidarity committed through spreading hatred,