from Fast Speaking Woman, Part 1

1945 –

I’m a rock woman
I’m a horse woman
I’m a monkey woman
I’m a chipmunk woman
I’m a mountain woman
I’m a blue mountain woman
I’m a marsh woman
I’m a jungle woman
I’m a tundra woman
I’m the lady in the lake
I’m the lady in the sand

            water that cleans
            flowers that clean
            water that cleans as I go

I’m a bird woman
I’m a book woman
I’m a devilish clown woman
I’m a holy-clown woman
I’m a whirling-dervish woman
I’m a whirling-foam woman
I’m a playful-light woman
I’m a tidal-pool woman
I’m a fast speaking woman

rite

working with willow rods that’s the method,
bring great bundles of them,
put on the ground scatter them
pronounce them, saying:

“here’s one”
“here’s another one”
“here’s one, there…over there…”

willow rods, very consoling we’ll clear the ground
you don’t have to be a Scythian…

and then the ones behaving more like women use a different method

Anne Waldman

2018

from “denoument”

Resistance. Had to resist. Ward off. Deflect. Exorcise. Defy. Apotropaic experiments to shift tone & danger. Apo, away, trepein, to turn. Make the day an amulet. And there were women everywhere across the land, children women, and girl women and they women and fluid women and men who were women and boy women and women from the past on the tongues of mind & ear and images of women everywhere: ancestor women. Out on the streets. And everyone woman that day. I am woman they said. And it had already happened if you stopped to think.

Anne Waldman

2018

Poems

from Fast Speaking Woman, Part 1

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from Fast Speaking Woman, Part 1

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