So, it has taken me a while to come back to the blog, but sometimes life just compels you to rant. When I met the amazing and powerful Anita Hill a few years ago after her visit to Asheville sponsored by “Our Voice” (www.ourvoicenc.org), the wonderful local organization that “serves all individuals in Buncombe County affected by sexual assault and abuse,” I had a feeling that I could relax a little because things were getting better, that we were actually learning from the past and moving into a brighter future for women in this country
I no longer feel that way. Especially not this week. All I feel is sad and angry and frustrated and overwhelmed by the power of persistent white male privilege. So, forgive me for ranting, but here is my take on things. And I really don’t care if it is a poem or not. I just care that it says what I feel!
On Hearing Christine Blasey Ford
Where is the one-piece swimsuit
To shield her today
From his smirking, roaring
Privilege?
I went to Yale!
They promised!
Don’t you cross me, bitch!
She sits there,
facing the worst,
acknowledging her own losses,
even smiling at her legislators,
remaining proudly
who she is.
“I’m sorry. What does exculpatory mean?”
She waits for them
to welcome her
into a civic process.
But the rules of this game
were set long before
She picked up the phone
To do the right thing.
For her country,
For these old white men
And sad white women
Who do not deserve her.
We do not deserve her.
The row of stone faces is immutable,
but inside they cringe
in the face of
one woman’s indivisible
truth;
they shrivel in
Inadequacy.
She wasn’t supposed to be this
believable.
She’s not playing the game.
Somebody get a hook!
They pretend to listen,
Until, bursting blood vessels
Of righteous indignation and fear,
They welcome him back
to the chair.
So much better.
So much safer here
Under the warmth of his anger,
His crocodile tears,
The world they know and love,
Brett’s world!
After all, they worked their buns off
(and some other people’s)
To get here!
They can’t let their sons down!
I like beer. We all like beer.
What’s the score?
How many beers?
How many Devil’s Triangles?
How big is your
gavel?
Am I really a Senator?
Wait a minute!
Did you pass out from drinking in college?
I don’t know. Did you?
So, the whole lot of them,
The smug, confident, fading specters,
Decide
To refuse
to remember
that they have daughters.
And where are their wives?
Crying silently at home
Over sappy, romantic movies?
The entire reigning party–
Every last one of them,
Including a few scared plantation ladies,
Clutching for dear life to their own
Scratched-out crumbs of power,
Lacks the imagination
To weep for someone else’s daughter,
Or remember Anita Hill.
Not one of them
Has the living, breathing
guts
To move one step away
From this darkening world,
Where Trump is king,
And we have all tumbled
Down the rabbit hole.
How much courage would it take
To hear her?
How much
to say “This matters.”
Just one, maybe two people.
That’s all we need
To let a few million women,
Clinging by their fingernails
To the country
they used to believe in,
breathe out.
Instead of, once again,
The boot in the face,
The powerful punch in the gut:
“Frankly, Scarlett,
We don’t give a damn.”
