Memories Flow in Our Veins

Forty Years of Women's Writing from CALYX

CALYX Editorial Collective, CALYX Editorial Collective

• Publisher: Ooligan Press
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781932010848
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Women Authors Literary Collections
• Index: Literature

Feminist icon CALYX Press has dedicated forty years to publishing the work of women writers, amplifying diverse voices, and creating a dynamic and inclusive literary space. Memories Flow in Our Veins commemorates the CALYX legacy and their contribution to the landscape of literature, while exploring the perennial themes of place and politics, aging and caregiving, and discovery and self-reckoning.

Featuring poetry and fiction by some of the most renowned and decorated women writers of the past four decades, Memories Flow In Our Veins is a triumphant showcase of the work published by CALYX Press through the years.

The Space We Occupy: Women Embodied

The body. Such an intensely personal thing: a place of self, of desire, of incredible hurt, and of powerful joy. And yet for women, as for so many, this place of birth and of death, of hunger and satiety, of humanity and unspeakable cruelty is never truly our own. Women’s bodies have been, and continue to be, possessed, politicized, legislated, and discarded with little thought given to the intersections of place and space through which we move. Even to speak of “women’s bodies” simplifies the varying ways in which women inhabit bodies of different color, size, ability, age, location, and nationality.

Throughout history, whenever women look to challenge the status quo, they inevitably are chafing against barriers to their bodies—from the development of Nushu, the “women’s language” of the Hunan province in China to ease the physical isolation of foot binding and patrilocal marriage, to the movement for “rational dress” in the nineteenth century West, to ongoing battles over work, family, and reproductive choice. Breaking these barriers by writing freely about sexuality, rape and sexual assault, birth, weight, and aging is an essential part of beginning a dialogue to challenge the cultural notion that women’s bodies are mysterious, dangerous, and need to be controlled.

Breaking the taboo of writing about bodies is necessarily compounded by the complicated relationship so many women have with their own—their sexuality, concepts of beauty, and the experience of aging. The reality is that no two bodies are the same; for that reason, many of the pieces shared here may feel intensely personal, but they are also somehow accessible as they become about birth and death, the only universals.

We are taught that great writing is in the head, not the body, that to embody writing is to fill it with shame and mess and complication. Perhaps it would be easier to focus on some Platonic ideal of humanity, rational and infinitely controllable—that which only bleeds when dramatically appropriate, makes love to keep the reader titillated, and exists to be molded to the authorial will. However, rejecting this model breaks authors free to share the focus between the “out there” and the “in here” of our core reaction to ourselves and our experiences—wrinkles and all.

Cinderella Dream at Ten

Ingrid Wendt

1:1 (1976)

Each night under the tree the same wolf

waits for The Beauty to fall

down into the gravel circle the children

draw each day for marbles:

gravel fine as salt: when it’s ground

into your knees you have to

let it work itself out.

Each night under the tree the same

wolf waits and no one

is around to save

The Beauty waiting alone inside

her flowing yellow hair with the wolf

snapping at her

plain blue skirts draped gracefully over

the lowest branch

skirts the mice her only real

friends will trim with ribbons

lace scraps her wicked

step-sisters don’t need.

So there’s no question: each night you

in your father’s car

(your father driving)

drive past the playground, your heart

in your knees even before

you see her

(in the tree where she always is)

throw open the door, hurry her

into the seat beside

you hurry to slam the door on

the wolf

who is

already gobbling down

(as you knew he would, painlessly)

your legs

from toes

to knees, walking you up right

at the hemline of your own short skirt

knowing it’s happened before, knowing your

toes are still there, not to

cry out, knowing

It’s after all the price you pay

for Beauty.

Coupled

Barbara Garden Baldwin

1:1 (1976)

They are married. An insect

pinned to the center of her eye,

his image writhes. Swinging open

and shut like the sky

on its hinges she has whittled

stars from his breastbone and placed

them over her sleepless

lids. A rumor spread by the moon,

a ghost who walks electric in her veins

crooning over and over

his name. An incessant rosary.

A handful of rice, whispers and lies.

Her bones hum. A falcon

tied to her prey she stitches

his shadow under her own and rides.

Sorcerer’s Apprentice

Barbara Garden Baldwin

1:1 (1976)

You come to life in my hands!

I am the Lady Midas

reclaiming my inheritance.

My touch undoes

the alchemy that froze

your golden bones.

A statue, you live and move

beneath my fingertips.

A charmed serpent, you unwind

inside my veins.

We thrive together, pale lichen

tentacle to bark.

Blue as the skin on a newborn

skull, the pool of

your breath floats in my palm.

We are one.

The idea of anything perfect

begins all over again.

At The Party

Ursula K. Le Guin

Women and Aging (1986)

The women over fifty

are convex from collarbone to crotch,

scarred armor nobly curved.

Their eyes look out from lines

through you, like the eyes of lions.

Unexpectant, unforgiving, calm,

they can eat children.

They eat celery and make smalltalk.

Sometimes when they touch each other’s arms

they weep for a moment.

The Idea of Making Love

Alicia Ostriker

Women and Aging (1986)

The idea of making love as sticking your tongue

into the calyx of the other & licking up

its nectar while being licked oneself we

love this because we are always manufacturing

nectar and when someone sticks a pointy tongue

into us and takes a drop on the tongue-tip and

swallows it we make more nectar we can always

make more of our own nectar and

are always thirsty for the nectar of others

The Crone I Will Become

Jean Hegland

14:3 (1993)

I sometimes think the crone I will become

will miss this blood, this mess, the dear skins

I cradle and soap, these little daughters.

I hoard gifts for her, that wrinkled, dry-

wombed hag, collect trinkets

and pictures, souvenirs

of this fat time. She

hardly cares. Even now I sometimes

glimpse her: Fiercer than any maiden, she stands

unchanging beneath the harvest moon. A black

wind streams her hair, her daughters are grown

and gone, beloved, unnecessary. Her life

is her own, my souvenirs are dead scraps

scuttling in a wilder wind.

Boning

Lorraine Healy

21:1 (2003)

—To Will

At seventeen, he has fallen

flat-on-the-face, out-

for-the-count in love.

The food we buy languishes

in the pantry, dies inside

the fridge. For all we know,

he’s surviving on tulips,

or alder pollen. To think,

he says, I used to hate this place…

We shake our heads.

She was born here! This makes

the nettles worthy of worship.

At night, propping the phone

on the bed, he sings her

the country-western songs he

writes for her, the kind

with no heartbreak. Fifteen,

inside her ribcage nestles

a surprising bird from a bluegrass

hill, and fast-moving brooks,

and morning fragrances. This dimpled

marvel, the guile of dew.

So when his far-off friend

asks him, “Are you boning

her yet?”, something

hard and edgy hits against

a crystalline place of his,

all of a sudden a gossamer

of cracked glass.

More than two hundred bones

utterly in love with her,

more tissue, white cells, dendrites

than he could count. The marrow

of each bone lit with hunger,

blue with joy. The little spaces

within the marrow of the bones

tunneled by the wild chinooks

of what she brings.

Nobody tells him where biology

and language will collide.

What he knows in his bones today

is his to keep. A man, he chooses

not to grandstand; his steady voice

replies, “No. It’s not

like that.”

Magnificat

Kirsten Sundberg Lunstrum

20:3 (2007)

Mama says, “The good Lord giveth and He will taketh away.” She says this is the taketh—this swollen belly, too big to hide anymore and bursting under my blouse buttons. “God Almighty, child!” Mama screams at me. She screams because I’ve gone and gave it away—my blessing—my blessing ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Acknowledgments
• Epigraph
• Part 1
• Part 2
• Part 3
• Part 4
• About CALYX
• About the Authors
• Ooligan Press
• Copyright