Ourstory
Ourstory - Carole Satyamurti
Ourstory
Let us now praise women
with feet glass slippers wouldn’t fit;
not the patient, nor even the embittered
ones who kept their place,
but awkward women, tenacious with truth,
whose elbows disposed of the impossible;
who split seams, who wouldn’t wait,
take no, take sedatives;
who sang their own numbers, went uninsured,
knew best what they were missing.
Our misfit foremothers are joining forces
underground, their dusts mingling
breast-bone with scapula, forehead
with forehead. Their steady mass
bursts locks; lends a springing foot
to our vaulting into enormous rooms.
from Stitching the Dark: New and Selected Poems (Bloodaxe, 2005), Carole Satyamurti 2005, used by permission of the author and the publisher