Rage

In me there is a rage to defy
the order of the stars
despite their pretty patterns.
To see is Gods who hold forth now
on human thrones
can will away my lust
to dare
and press to order the anarchy
I would serve.

The silence between your words
rams into me
like a sword.

Alice Walker

Something to Look Forward to
(this is my absolute favorite poem ever written)

Menopause -- word used as an insult:
a menopausal woman, mind or poem
as if not to leak regularly or on the caprice
of the moon, the collision of egg and sperm
were the curse we first learned to call that blood

I have twisted myself to praise that bright splash.
When my womb open its lips on the full
or dark of the moon, that connection
aligns me as it does the sea.  I quiver,
a compass needle thrilling with magnetism.

Yet for every celebration there's the time
it starts on a jet with the seatbelt sign on.
Consider the trail of red amoebae
crawling onto hostess' sheets to signal
my body's disregard of calendar, clock.

How often halfway up the side of a mountain,
during a demonstration with the tactical police
force drawn up in tanks between me and a toilet;
during an endless wind machine panel with four males
I the token woman and they with iron bladders,

I have felt that wetness and wanted to strangle
my womb like a mouse.  Sometimes it feels cosmic
and sometimes it feels like mud.  Yes, I have prayed
to my blood on my knees in toilet stalls
simply to show its rainbow of deliverance.

My friend Penny at twelve, being handed a napkin
the size of an ironing board cover, cried out
Do I have to do this from now till I die?
No, said her mother, it stops in middle age.
Good, said Penny, there's something to look forward to.

Today supine, groaning with demon crab claws
gouging my belly, I tell you I will secretly dance
and pour out a cup of wine on the earth
when time stops that leak permanently;
I will burn my last tampons as votive candles.

Marge Piercy (and I plan to join her)