Tag: Jane Muschenetz

Point Blank

An Illustrated Poem by Jane Muschenetz 

An illustrated poem with text, image of a gun, and charts with gun violence statistics

MIT grad and former Bain Management Consultant, Jane Muschenetz arrived in the United States as a child refugee from Soviet Ukraine. She is a 2023 City of Encinitas Exhibiting Artist and winner of The Good Life Review 2022 Poetry Prize. Her debut poetry collection, All the Bad Girls Wear Russian Accents (Kelsay, 2023), was shortlisted for the Jacar Press Chapbook Prize. Jane is Director of Partnerships at San Diego Entertainment & Arts Guild and Co-Founder of the San Diego Chapter of Women Who Submit Lit. Connect with Jane’s work at her website, www.PalmFrondZoo.com, and in various publications. Follow her on social media @PalmFrondZoo.

1 Incident of firearm mortality per 100K population by global developed economies, https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2022-us-gun-violence-world-comparison/. M.McGough, K. Amin, N. Panchal, C. Cox, “Child and Teen Firearm Mortality in the U.S. and Peer Countries,” KFF.org, Jul, 2022; https://www.kff.org/global-health-policy/issue-brief/child-and-teen-firearm-mortality-in-the-u-s-and-peer-countries/; USA child+teen data from 2020.

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Gender Neutral

By Jane Muschenetz

To Skyler and the Diversionary Theatre, who stand proud and help all of us stand together.

 

They’re studying the effects of gendering on language
and cultural norms —
how the moon is feminine in Spanish and Russian,
but masculine in German
how this alters
our perception of its qualifications —
whether we believe it to be
beautiful, changeable (f) or
stoic, abrupt (m) —
over 1000 Google links discuss in length

how the moon is the moon.

Some promote doing away with sex, but I —
having learned gender from my Mother Tongue
and feeling its lack like a missing limb when I try bending English —
am fascinated, mouth hungry
to embrace each understanding of our world —
uncomfortable and broken as it is.
Learning to speak again and again,
there is something revealing
about seeing the moon
through every lexiconic, scientific, and artistic notion —
and still not having enough
words to fill the sky.

 

Emerging writer and fully grown MIT nerd, Jane (Yevgenia!) Muschenetz (Veitzman!) came to the US as a Jewish refugee from Ukraine at 10 years of age. She is now mother to two very American kids. Identity and cultural displacement strongly influence her writing. Creator of PalmFrondZoo.com, Jane’s work also appears or is forthcoming in Mom Egg Review, The San Diego Poetry Annual, and The Detour-Ahead Exhibit.

Photo by Debbie Hall.

Note from Writers Resist: If you appreciate creative resistance and would like to support it, you can make a small, medium or large donation to Writers Resist from our Give a Sawbuck page.