Dorothy Friedman-August
Dorothy Friedman August is a widely published poet, teacher and editor. She studied with John Ashbery at Brooklyn College where she received her MFA.
She co-founded THE HELEN REVIEW and was poetry editor of DOWNTOWN for 10 years. Friedman August has published poetry and articles in numerous journals, most recently in NYC FROM THE INSIDE, AND THEN, BONE BOUQUET, RECLUSE, MUDFISH, and SENSITIVE SKIN. Also in POETRY BAY, including review of John Ashbeyr's show at The Tibor d'Nagy Gallery, plus other art and book reviews. She co-wrote GORILLA KISSES, a musical comedy, with Carol Polcovar and has published two books of poetry, another two forthcoming, L SHAPED ROOM and DRINKING ALASKA. She's founder and editor of WHITE RABBIT, the bunny who says, "I held the verb and fell upward."
DEFECTOR
1
It was always American marriage that was in jeopardy.
So by the time I defected in 1974
I was just one in a movement.
2
I dibbled and dabbled with art for years,
contracting a son and two daughters.
Jeff and Mabel keep disappearing on their little boy.
He is into drying cleaning, while she is busy
growing artistically by making quilts
and painting stuffed pandas.
3
Women can also defend the alphabet.
Introduce the tough corduroy
that grows up beautifully.
4
If imagination rode up for Sunday dinner,
would it be wearing men's or women's clothes?
5
I never wanted to be a woman.
For awhile I was neutral.
6
I wish I had qualities like my father.
He lived in the haze
where the horizon is very strong.
7
Memories divide their time among the bones.
They are the people shapers,
dressing us in our pajamas.
WHICH HEAD SHOULD I WEAR TODAY?
Which head should I wear today? Girl or boy?
If I wear the girl head then I will be cute.
If I wear the boy head I will be in charge.
Or I could wear no head at all.
Then you wouldn't know who I am.
Well, you don't know anyway.
Or I could b e a gorilla like Kong.
Or a fish like Wanda. Or maybe a mermaid.
Or a frankfurter. Then I wouldn't have to speak.
I could bat my eyelashes while someone
spreads mustard on me and eats me.
Whatever form I take, the conundrum would exist.
Which head should I wear? Girl or boy?
Or should I just shuttle back and forth on the trains
and buses. Bellowing like a man, and accepting
my little girl's fate.
MOTHER IS THE MOST WANTED PICTURE
Mother's is the most wanted picture in the post office.
Someone always finds her fingerprints somewhere
and says "you're it."
Everyone wants to borrow here for one night's dinner.
A good meal at a blue-plate diner, that's the courtship.
After the marriage we provide her with gas, oil, water,
and electricity, all the responsibilities we've declined.
She's easy. Her qualifications were set forth from birth.
For her there's no possibility of retirement.
She watches us take all our young and foolish steps.
She has the right disposition for this sort of thing.
She watches us go everywhere, having gone nowhere.
In her sleep she raises her arms above her head.
It looks as if she is flying for herself.
MAGIC BISTRO
Morning brings mercurial memories
of wilder days, when gayness was our umbrella,
cherchez la femme our song,
creating you and me letting go.
I ran beside you wearing my checkered past.
We had only the umbilical to go on.
You plugged me up with mink, with drink
and warmth from your magic bistro.
Now as men grope my spine and my teeth chatter
I think of all the places I've been
where breasts weave blankets with you and me
inside, warming each other. Now each day brings
spontaneous silences and perhaps
even these verses as caresses.
If I run my hand over my soft translucent heart,
your voice is still there, shielding me
from the coarse and stubbled universe.
Somewhere, bigger and more dangerous than here
we will speak the unspeakable, so that this excitement
can come again and another fierce fruit can blossom.
THE ROOM IS VERY WARM LIKE THE WOMAN
The room is very warm like the woman. Can you guess
what she is doing? She is holding on to her fate.
The woman is the wise warrior of night. She says:
It was always someone else's war. An animal war.
Which means numbing not nurturing or measuring
the hurts by him and his artillery. The way an animal
measures how we lay beside each other in a war
that was not ours. And how the night was wonderful.
As we lay beside each other. Two of a kind.
Mama's name and Mary's breast breathing in us.
SOME MYTHS ABOUT LESBIANS
When lesbians are ripe, they fall from branches
If you set a whiskey bottle on their heads, they dance.
Their profile is shaped like a bird’s head.
They have thick stubby bodies.
Lesbians smash their toys as children.
They will not leave their mother
Or their mother’s lovers in peace.
They are sullen.
Lesbians are sent screaming and dinnerless to bed.
They are not to be reasoned with.
They slam their doors.
Lesbians go out into the street.
They are corrupt and ambiguous.
Lesbians go out in groups.
They fly in squadrons,
And are much unsettled by the wind.
They have messy hair and dirt in the complexion.
Some people say they eat dirt and lizard for breakfast.
Some people say they shit on statues and spit
And have two rows of boney plates on their backs like stegosaurus.
(Lesbian response)
Those plates you know get heavier all the time.
We use our four spikes and our tails to keep attackers away.
We learn to eat Lizards.
L SHAPED ROOM
She lies in an L shaped room in which
sentences shaped as lesbians
laugh at the moment
they mount one another.
What is the fine line between
what a lilac does and what
the photo shows?
A mirror does pushups and in it
perhaps a child dances
or a child loses its woman on the page.
Perhaps the image is a subterfuge
for fingers and higher words.
A mirror does pushups and in it
a child dances fearsome and unafraid.
But it also records the sadness of
a wind-up doll with no paragraph or voice.
The lilac is wild. The photo shows it.
It grows in an L shaped room,
its leaves shaped as lesbians
who mount the moment and laugh.
