ON INTERNATIONAL WOMENS' DAY

ON INTERNATIONAL WOMENS' DAY

I was having dinner at a friend's,

at the old Forest Knolls post office,

we were a gathering of women and children,

feasting on salmon and talking of resistance:

of marching & writer friends, Maxine, Susan,

women warriors handcuffed for loitering at the White House.

I'd just walked the Lagunitas School playground

where we lined up to witness the test bombs at Jackass Flats,

where we prepared for nuclear bombs by hiding under our desks.

It was as if no time at all had passed: I was in 5th grade

and we imagined the coming millennium.

But I couldn't get past the year 2003,

an unnameable terror had seized me

and I forsaw darkness and destruction....

I had a hard time leaving behind that nightmare...

Then at dinner, the floodgates of memory opened,

and here we are, the dogs of war slouching toward Bagdhad.

A friend sends me emails (amidst penile & breast enlargement spams

cleverly disguised as an exonumia of mortages & loans.

It says: “don't pay any more” but it opens into promises

of “superb fresh breasts” and “lust, sex & no commitment”)

and how shall we pay? With handcuffs? Jeb Bush hands out cigars

when the bomb test is declared a success—

MOAB, the “mother of all bombs” for the “mother of all battles.”

And angered by such blatant sacrilege, I fear the worst,...

Inexplicably, Conrad’s Heart of Darkness comes to mind:

I can’t make it out: “Mistah Kurtz, he dead.” Then, “The horror. The horror.”

My friend writes about how the Stocton Street Tunnel

will serve as gathering site should the bombs begin to fall

or perhaps it will serve as a bomb shelter or a masoleum

when it comes

when it comes

when it comes...

She says: Oh, baby, it's going to be alright. I know this is scary and hard but we—and millions like us—know how to love, and we will know how to love, no matter what happens. Energy created cannot be destroyed. More life, to you, a chara, and to us all, more life, more life, more life...

3/11/03