the politics of a moment of motherhood

so much goes unsaid as we play our parts in this giant, stupid play-of-a-life.

we step into motherhood with a script already written.

we run from the fact of our own mothers only to find their words spilling out of our mouths, their gestures animating our arguments, their sly and wicked fictions decorating our mistakes like technicolor frosting.

we need a revolution but we’re scared we’ll lose our men, or our women, or whatever it is we think we “have,” our houses? our shoes? cars? bank accounts?

are we afraid our ever-sagging breasts will someday reach our knees, and in so doing, erase our value from this culture of commodification and death?

a woman’s body is an interstice of meaning.

culturally.

privately.

cosmicly.

like language: a woman’s body is the site where creation and destruction, meaning and the obliteration of meaning, eros and the black hole all rage.

fierce, this body.

and contradictory.

those mothers marching around spitting out pro-life slogans while sending their sons to war, voting to obliterate someone else’s children, pissing their hatred on same-sex love.

those mothers with their wide open liberalisms shunning housewives and prostitutes, making their way ever toward some ikea place-holder of a self, getting published, getting jobs, getting gigs, closing doors behind them to anyone who makes too much noise, too little sense, turning their well-dressed and intellectually stunning backs on women whose paths don’t lead anywhere but to the grocery store or goodwill.

still, this body we have, even if it needs a better eye/I, this body makes meaning.

unstoppable, unflinching, meaning.

revolutions are hiding under the surface of our skin.

touch me.

i dare you.

i am raising a son differently, world.

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