Judith Kerman
During my pre-teen years, I became aware that being female involved ongoing struggle against socially-constructed limitations. I was not "supposed to be" who I am. As a result, I became a conscious feminist when it was not fashionable to be one (as it seems, in some circles, it is again not fashionable). I founded Earth's Daughters Magazine in 1971 to make a place where women writers would know without any doubt that their voices and perspectives were welcome. E's D's is still operating, almost 40 years later, because in spite of real progress women still need that place.
Cambria Heights, Queens, New York
I always thought
my childhood was boring
Virginia Schmidt with her
rat face and dishwater hair
standing on my foot
until, crying, I finally
pushed her off
Sheila who was
maybe smarter than me
or maybe not
we ran around naked
together at 4 or 5
later she had body hair
before I did
and then I moved away
I saw her again
in high school
I don’t remember where
only that she had
a woman’s figure, wore
a fitted black dress with white piping
like a grown-up
a house with a locked door
suddenly opens
I walk back in
but this is someone else’s
house, I need
a can opener or
new roll of toilet paper
but they don’t keep things
in the same drawers
the room was
all mine, with a porch
facing the maple tree
and hot pink sunsets
that threatened novas
pink ribbons
dripped from my dress
for my sixth birthday party
pink ribbons for
a doll’s blonde hair, girly-girly
Marilyn Monroe heavenly
angels, chocolate boxes
pink wallpaper with gold stars and roses
scattered across it
replacing the old dark green with yellow and white
pansies like monkeys’ faces
I played alone
on the bedroom floor
with Susan and Ruth
my two dolls, years before
Barbie, and Susan was
a prince, her sexless body
marked with red
crayon
Daughters (III): Palindrome
Her voice saturates the furniture,
seeps from under the rugs. There is no choice:
somehow, sooner or later,
the taut
skin's resilience, the easy falling
into graceful poses, the bright
future begin to fail, confront
me in the mirror with another
darker season. Late at night, under pressure or fatigue,
I sag. I'm sensitive to cold.
The crone's image, fetched
from fairytales, stains the mirror with old
stories, regrets, grief.
The echoes sharpen their teeth:
this old
woman, belly stretched
and wrinkled, this old
leather bag:
world's mother
world's cunt
door of light
it's her voice, calling
"come out!"
It's her
voice, her face:
body's future.
Judith Kerman has published eight books or chapbooks of poetry, most recently Galvanic Response (March Street Press, 2005); the bilingual collection, Plane Surfaces/Plano de Incidencia (Santo Domingo: CCLEH, 2002), with Spanish translations by Johnny Durán; and A Woman in Her Garden: Selected Poems of Dulce María Loynaz (translations; White Pine Press, 2002). She has a book of translations in press with BOA Editions. Kerman was a Fulbright Senior Scholar to the Dominican Republic in 2002, translating the poetry and fiction of contemporary Dominican women. She runs Mayapple Press (1980-present) and was founding editor of Earth’s Daughters (1971 to present).