Outrage drives me outside,
a choice a woman can still make.
I clamber close to our muddy creek
collecting trash caught in fallen branches.
I empty water from a Stroh’s bottle
and battered jug of Cheer detergent.
Pull out blue plastic bags and
an honest-to-God wire hanger.
Untangle a multicolored jump rope
with red wooden handles,
the kind we jumped with during
recess at Pine Elementary School
chanting K.I.S.S.I.N.G., and Cinderella.
Some girls were such good skippers
they didn’t miss a jump till a whistle’s
shrill made us head back in,
line up at the drinking fountain, then
sit every minute of three more hours.
I hear singsong rhymes in my mind
as I walk back with this trash
still feeling our legs leap,
our hair fly in synch,
drumbeat of feet on the ground
the way girls and women
from the beginning
have worked together
while singing in unison.
Laura Grace Weldon lives in a township too tiny for traffic lights where she works as a book editor, teaches writing workshops, and maxes out her library card. Laura served as Ohio’s 2019 Poet of the Year and is the author of four books. lauragraceweldon.com
Photo credit: ErstwhileHuman via a Creative Commons license.
A note from Writers Resist
Thank you for reading! 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.
Throwaway
By Karen Kilcup
Who would want to live in a world which is just not quite fatal? –Rachel Carson
A one-woman Revolution,
Jemima Wilkinson was stoned
for preaching the light that lives
in everyone. The Public Universal Friend
was driven north from Philadelphia
to the Finger Lakes, her movement forecasting
what would follow: women’s rights,
abolition, the Underground Railroad.
Today the monstrous trucks lumber north
with New York City’s trash, creating
a mountain baptized Seneca Meadows,
leaving a trail of sludge and garbage that leaches
slowly into the lakes, their stretched-out
digits trying to grasp what it all means,
will mean, in a moment when land and water
and history are for sale by the Town Council,
which spews the gospel of lower taxes
and buries ever deeper the women
of Seneca Falls, Seneca Lake,
and the sparkling railroad that carried
so many to fresh futures.
In this place, this time, what does clean mean?
What—or who—is dirty? Will we push
the plastic and the people underground
for good, or will the glacial hands
that hold the Haudenosaunee
send the refuse down, down,
until it returns elsewhere
in poisoned protest?
Poet’s note: A Quaker known by many as the Public Universal Friend, Jemima Wilkinson fled the ostensibly liberal city of Philadelphia shortly after the American Revolution, joined by devout followers who saw her as a spiritual guide. Susan Brind Morrow’s story in The Nation, “The Finger Lakes Are Being Poisoned,” ironically parallels Wilkinson’s flight to the appalling movement of diesel trucks that carry New York’s waste to the formerly pristine region that is home to centuries of Iroquois (Haudenosaunee) people, as well as to some of America’s most important movements for social justice advanced by Native Americans, women, and enslaved people—all historically considered subhuman and “dirty.”
A teacher and writer for more than forty years, Karen Kilcup is the Elizabeth Rosenthal Professor of American Literature, Environmental & Sustainability Studies, and Women’s, Gender, & Sexuality Studies at UNC Greensboro. She feels fortunate to work with many students of color, first-generation students, and LGBTQI+ students at this Minority-Serving Institution. Their courage and imagination inspire her and give her hope. Her forthcoming book, winner of the 2021 Winter Goose Poetry Prize, is titled The Art of Restoration.
Photograph by OwlPacino via a Creative Commons license.
A note from Writers Resist:
Thank you for reading! 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.
After the Splat
By Kate LaDew
In 1867, the first instance of a hero saving their sweetheart from an oncoming train after a dastardly villain tied them to the tracks debuted in the last scene of a New York stage play.
The hero’s sweetheart calls for help, while the hero, locked inside the train station, watches from a barred window, searching for a way out. The villain disappears, off to be dastardly somewhere else, and the whistle of a locomotive sounds, the sweetheart’s cries grow frantic.
The door shudders from a blow on the other side. The hinges creak, the wood splinters and the door swings open, lock dangling, as the hero appears, out of breath, axe in hand.
The sweetheart calls again, beginning to sob, as the hero rushes forward, tearing at the ropes crisscrossed over the tracks, and pulls the sweetheart to safety a split second before the train barrels past.
The woman drops the axe, the man shrugs off the remnants of the rope and they embrace, each declaring undying love. The sweetheart marvels that his hero is capable of such bravery, yet not allowed the right to vote.
In 1867, the first instance of a hero saving their sweetheart from an oncoming train after a dastardly villain tied them to the tracks features the woman as hero, the man as sweetheart.
A scene from Augustin Daly’s 1867 play, Under the Gaslight
Every moment since that night, men have waited while women, with incredible patience, undo the cruel, illogical and sometimes just plain stupid acts of other men. The good, waiting men all the while wondering why the world is so unfair and “Oh! if only something could be done, by somebody, somewhere, about it all.” But it can’t be them, The Good Men, because someone has tied them to a train track, and don’t you hear the whistle? and won’t somebody think about them? down here all alone with all the other Good Men, waiting for somebody, somewhere to do something about it all? Never mind how they got here, and never mind that the ropes aren’t secure because the knots have been tied by The Bad Men, who only know how to tie women’s wrists.
Those Brave Strong Women who really deserve more, more pay and medical rights and safety and equal access and equality in general and all those things they blabber on about. Someday maybe, somebody, but right now, let’s deal with the train situation.
All The Good Men who have daughters and wives and sisters and mothers and really get it, truly, no really, feminism and such, and hey, where are you going? don’t you hear?—can’t you see?—I would do something, I swear, it’s just, these ropes, you know and I mean, I don’t agree with all the bad men, and I’m only laughing to fit in, and I don’t really believe—and if it were up to me—and I would never—and the light in that tunnel’s pretty bright, and the tracks are really rumbling, aren’t they? and is it just me or is it getting hotter, and that whistle’s pretty close, and I think that might be the tr—
After the splat, the woman sitting in the train station she built from scratch, feet on the desk she designed herself, pauses in the middle of a sentence in the paragraph of a chapter of a book she wrote. Looking up at the blue cloudless sky, past the glass skylight she can open whenever she wants, the woman asks all the other women in the room, feet up on their own desks, reading their own self-authored books, Hey, did you hear something?
Kate LaDew is a graduate of the University of North Carolina at Greensboro with a BA in Studio Art. She resides in Graham, North Carolina, with her cats Charlie Chaplin and Janis Joplin.
Boris Badenov image: Fair use.
Train scene from Daly’s Under the Gaslight (1868).
