Ijeoma Umebinyguo

Linda Sillitoe

When I read Linda Sillitoe, I realize, I am not the first one to see the bigotry, the need for control, the fear of true feminine power in the words and actions of the mormon prophets, in the patriarchy, in their sky high and sacred temples where members are taught to whisper and be pure.  Bird shit is white on the outside but in the middle it is greasy and grimy like crude oil, and I believe the winged creatures have perfect aim, like so many leaders at the top, evading responsibility. I am among the few who know what the fall is like from their tower, and also to look up to realize the shattering of my worldview was actually a gift. 

The following poem was Linda Sillitoe's, written to her friend Lavina Fielding Anderson, who was fired from the staff of a famous and widely read church magazine, Ensign.  She had the audacity to provide the manuscript of a talk that had been stricken from that year's general conference, to another publication. If you are unfamiliar with mormon culture, it is important to understand that the dissemination of information must be done through the proper channels, through priesthood authority, not some woman who just wants to write it as it is. I have learned from the experience of feeling exiled, that on the outside, the landscapes become endless, your mind learns to shape shift as it slowly begins to recognize that reality was there all the time, and that no one can ever really silence you, no matter how hard they try.  

One by one
they throw us from the tower. 
And we spread our wings 
and fly. 

Rebecca Solnit

“The desire to go home that is a desire to be whole, to know where you are, to be the point of intersection of all the lines drawn through all the stars, to be the constellation-maker and the center of the world, that center called love. To awaken from sleep, to rest from awakening, to tame the animal, to let the soul go wild, to shelter in darkness and blaze with light, to cease to speak and be perfectly understood.”

Storming the Gates of Paradise: Landscapes for Politics

Riverbed where ash and gas flowed in May of 1980, Mt. St. Helens

“If every life is a river, then it's little wonder that we do not even notice the changes that occur until we are far out in the darkest sea. One day you look around and nothing is familiar, not even your own face.

My name once meant daughter, grandaughter, friend, sister, beloved. Now those words mean only what their letters spell out; Star in the night sky. Truth in the darkness.
I have crossed over to a place where I never thought I'd be. I am someone I would have never imagined. A secret. A dream. I am this, body and soul. Burn me. Drown me. Tell me lies. I will still be who I am.”

 

-Alice Hoffman, from Incantation

The Moment

by Margaret Atwood

The moment when, after many years
of hard work and a long voyage
you stand in the centre of your room,
house, half-acre, square mile, island, country,
knowing at last how you got there,
and say, I own this,

is the same moment when the trees unloose
their soft arms from around you,
the birds take back their language,
the cliffs fissure and collapse,
the air moves back from you like a wave
and you can't breathe.

No, they whisper. You own nothing.
You were a visitor, time after time
climbing the hill, planting the flag, proclaiming.
We never belonged to you.
You never found us.
It was always the other way round. 

Burning Oneself Out

by Adrienne Rich

 

We can look into the stove tonight
as into a mirror, yes,

the serrated log, the yellow-blue gaseous core

the crimson-flittered grey ash, yes.
I know inside my eyelids
and underneath my skin

Time takes hold of us like a draft
upward, drawing at the heats
in the belly, in the brain

You told me of setting your hand
into the print of a long-dead Indian
and for a moment, I knew that hand,

that print, that rock,
the sun producing powerful dreams
A word can do this

or, as tonight, the mirror of the fire
of my mind, burning as if it could go on
burning itself, burning down

feeding on everything
till there is nothing in life
that has not fed that fire