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Wendy Brown-Baez

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Mud Wrestling

Sugar'n'spice
Sugar'n'spice

Mud Wrestling | Media List


Statement

Mud Wrestling
inspired by Rumi

O my friends, I am mad with love and no one sees
how sweetly I am harnessed to the yoke; this
burden is light as hummingbirds nudging the
Goddess into flight, and O my friends, that
woman is me!

O my friends, I would not speak these words
flavored with flower-petal soup
carried to my doorstep in a Chinese basket
if they were not as true
as the naked woman leaning back into snow
if they had not been burnt alive
on my parchment tongue

"You are my friend," he says
and why do these words make me mad?
I have held out my love like an ancient dancer
somersaluting against the windowpane
first yes, then no
first enough, then desire
first I appear next to him in a photograph
someone says "husabdn-wife" and hits the flash
then I disappear like snow
furrowing intio mud

That word scarved back over his shoulder, "Friend,"
makes me delirious because the echo
in my sea-shell heart says: Awaken, my beloved, and
be like a stag upon the mountains

I am a woman unraveling herself
in a snake dance
that wants to snag him into loving me
but each gyration returns me
to my own center

"Adoration makes me free to say friend"
when I mean I am tuning my life
to the strumming
of his fingers
to say solitary
when I mean I am hoping
to learn harmony

Reviews

to be included in Ceremonies of the Spirit forthcoming from Plailn View Press