I.
Civility rests,
like once
a Victorian woman's hand
poised
to lift a cup of tea;
delicate, restless, full of pretense.
The corset holds tight
to the hourglass figure
beneath which
quakes the flesh
longing to breathe and roil free.
Sehnsucht, leiden;
german words of longing, yearning
filled with the passion
for what is
missing, lost, desired, needed.
Today,
her long thin hands
much adorned and painted
delicate, restless and full of pretense
reach for nobility of spirit, which,
always just eludes her grasp.
For she holds her
cupped and upturned hands
beneath an
abandoned fountain
full of brittle moss.
She turns away thirsty,
her soul unquenched,
her heart parched.
A beggar's palm
ought to be filled with
more
than the copper coins cast off
by the silent gloved hands
of patrician passersby.
And yet, she shuffles her gratitude
the top of her head bobbing
in the shame of her acquiescence.
Driven away from the gates of plenty
she grows round,
her loins and breasts
and belly,
sacred flesh,
girdled with her own protective fat.
The corset has lost its place.
But she still quakes
and longs
to breathe and roil free.
II.
A woman's civility is understood in her servility.
Ask for pennies and poverty will be your companion.
Corporations,
2 cars,
a house in the country,
click clack heels and smooth sliding Jaguar doors;
these are women's pennies.
Her riches roar
in the moans of labor.
Her wealth glistens
in the sweat of the women's lodge,
where the Iroquois Council of Mothers
elect their sons to chiefdom status
and REMOVE them when power is abused.
Life and death reside
in the spread of our hips
and the tilt of our walk.
The sheperd's staff runs
the length of our arms,
holy forgiveness rounds the
fullness of our breasts
and a yearning for peace
carves the curves of our waists.
This is our birthright;
this is her wealth
to inherit and share.
This is civility.
Then fat and round
as the ancient mother goddess
or thin and tall
as the runway model
None
need quake and roil
gasping to breathe free
delicate, restless and full of pretense.
She came home in the late afternoon dusk chilled to the bone from standing in cold leather shoes while she read the words that had shouted to her from the poster beside the green door: WOMAN SUFFRAGE! it proclaimed; she had stared at the words until her feet were numb. How could that ever happen, she wondered. Just think of all the men who would have to vote "yes" and if they were anything like Henry... and she couldn't bear to think of what Henry would do if she mentioned any of these thoughts, even if she told of this poster. But how to get to hear the woman who would be speaking those magic words? One evening Henry had read the headline from the newspaper: "Women Arrested in Suffrage Vigil" "What makes them think they're smart enough to vote? Good Lord, women don't have brains enough to get in from the cold; how can they expect to be able to judge the men running for office?" Amelia's murmured "I don't know, Henry," was just another response in the litany of their marriage, but she ached in the wrongness of it. She wasn't sure if she was brave enough to go and hear the woman speak, but the words from the poster keened in her bones... the right to vote...to have a voice equal to her husband's... a voice that could be as secret as her soul was secret from her husband. She murmured through supper and bedtime and breakfast, strung her courage together and left Henry a note: "Have gone to a meeting, dear; supper will be late." And went, listened, and fed. The words resounded in her head as she walked homeward, dancing in a dream of being a real person whose thoughts at last were echoed by the others she had met and sang with in that dusky room. The key in the door and the greeting, "Amelia, where have you been? I'm hungry!" stilled her dancing thoughts. "I went to hear a woman speak," she bravely answered. "Not about this suffrage nonsense, I trust," was his heavy reply. "How women can think they have brains enough to vote, I can't imagine!" "No, you can't," she said and walked to the kitchen and started supper. And the words replayed in her head.