in your excellent poem
about being a woman
- "cocaine, jazz, perspective,
and it was summer outside" -
but I am not some tractor
rusting and in need of repair
before I'm good for any of those things
one might use tractors for
on a bright summer day.
I am not some piece of equipment
it is unsafe to operate
without the manual, and the training
and that secret knowledge, passed down,
about where to nudge me to get me started,
and what to watch out for
to stop me going off the rails.
I am not some apparatus in a drawer,
idle for want of batteries.
I am more than your pity and disgust.
I am more than my sex, my salary and my semen,
and my gender is not a poison.
I know that's not what they meant
- I'm not as stupid as you think -
but it's what they said.
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