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Monday Meditations
Today's poem is dedicated to the girls and women victims of the Epstein cabal, to all victims of assault/abuse, and to so many whose voices have been silenced. May you all write your own books one day. The poem is from my book, The Book of Crooked Prayer.
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EXEGESIS, BOOK OF WOMEN
Examine the historical underpinnings
of this open book of women in cotton leggings,
before that rubber garters in metal clips,
flesh-tone nylons cinched and chafing
an inner thigh, wool stockings before that,
and before that linen pantaloons, all the way
back to bare legs. What can it mean,
those legs locked around a lover's waist?
On this page the image of a figure 8,
on that page the consonance of weeping
in a spotless kitchen, at the back an appendix
of near accomplishments, footnotes
throughout, losses so deep they can’t be
plumbed here, each chapter a re-made life
in the catch-and-release of making & unmaking
women, a final index of slights, miseries,
rare & hoarded joys, the paper itself a metaphor
for the thousand skins women peel away
or layer on, and always, always,
a dedication to tired, thick-veined hands
that will someday write their own book.
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