Urban Powwow
By Tamara J. Madison
Women with stories:
herstories, shestories, and goddess myths.
One-women, two-women,
red-women, blue-women,
loving women, hurting women,
seething, redeeming women
revenge-stained, fearless.
Women breathing for all the women
holding their breaths beneath
murderous thrusts of rage,
women with boots stomping their mouths
pummeled by flaming fists,
necks snapped by flick of savage wrists,
woman-breaths chewed, spat
back into their faces.
Breathing for all breaths dusted
with gunpowder, charred by bomb blasts,
gambled on surgery tables, breathing
for all breaths wrung dry
from every woman/man/child
their pleas ignored.
Volcanic swells, our bodies,
breathing, purifying pyres.
(The Women’s Performance Workshop, 7 Stages Theater, Atlanta, GA)
By Tamara J. Madison
Women with stories:
herstories, shestories, and goddess myths.
One-women, two-women,
red-women, blue-women,
loving women, hurting women,
seething, redeeming women
revenge-stained, fearless.
Women breathing for all the women
holding their breaths beneath
murderous thrusts of rage,
women with boots stomping their mouths
pummeled by flaming fists,
necks snapped by flick of savage wrists,
woman-breaths chewed, spat
back into their faces.
Breathing for all breaths dusted
with gunpowder, charred by bomb blasts,
gambled on surgery tables, breathing
for all breaths wrung dry
from every woman/man/child
their pleas ignored.
Volcanic swells, our bodies,
breathing, purifying pyres.
(The Women’s Performance Workshop, 7 Stages Theater, Atlanta, GA)
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