This is just a story.

1.
In this dream,
I am at the bottom of a dirt hole
I’ve lost my clothes.
I find this embarrassing.
I jump and claw at the sides, at the soil
But I feel this action in my own skin.
I am the soil that I touch
And it sends crippling waves
Of dull aching pleasure over my thighs
As I attempt to escape.
It reminds me of my first orgasm
The one I had when I was 10
While climbing the pole in gym class.
I wrapped myself around the pipe
50ft in the air
Terrified, unmoving
I heard yelling below me
But I was too frightened to listen,
Frightened of falling,
Frightened that I’d broken something inside me.
I almost let go.

In this dream
I am that child
Staring up through a hole
While a crowd gathers
To watch me unsuccessfully climb
As I am hindered by my childhoodfear
Of touching myself.

2.

In this dream
I’m in a shadowy dark house.
I do not exist in these rooms.
I am transparent. A visiting ghost.

The only audible noise is a woman
Breathing in rhythmic gasps.
I am witnessing a rape.

I cannot get out of this house.
I cannot help her.
.
The image of these two bodies
Follows me into each room.

In one room she is on her knees, he is cutting off her long dark hair.

I bolt to the bathroom; there he is, holding her under the water.

Kitchen; he is inside her. Destroying her.

Bedroom; I will never repeat what I see here.

I frantically turn around and a long wall of display windows appear, dimly light.
It’s her. She’s in them. All of them.
Her corpse is positioned like a store mannequin.
In one window, there is only an arm.
In another, only a tongue.

-Look
Whisper the invisible onlookers in my head
-Look, she’s split herself in two
-So that at least part of her may survive.

They’re pointing at me.
I am the woman behind the glass.

Posted by Alissa McCourt at 12:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

1.

In this dream
I’m in a sterilized coffee shop
Waiting in a long line.
When I get to the cashier
There is a stove
I make waffles that smell of ginger bread.
After shaping the dough
I drop the waffles into a pan of boiling water
And I watch them twist and disintegrate.

2.

In this dream
I am in a large white room
Expanding for miles
Filled with grey cats.
An overgrown moss.
Mine is here somewhere.
I search through unfamiliar fur
Calling her name.
Will I know her when I see her?
She is lost.

3.

In this dream
I’m in my high school art classroom.
A blank and dirty room filled with paint stained tables.
There is a fire.
Some sort of violent volcanic eruption.
I feel as though it is somehow my fault.
There is a small boy in the classroom.
He must be in elementary school.
I don’t know how he got here

4.

In this dream
I am holding the body of my cat
Wrapped in a red fleece blanket.
I’d like to bury her
But when I peel back the blanket to peak at the dead,
I’m cradling a stone.

Posted by Alissa McCourt at 11:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

1.

In this dream
I am in an art museum.
It is filled with dead women.
An exhibition.
They lie broken, draped over tables and chairs,
Waxy and rotting;
Some inside of closets
I find one bleeding in a bathroom stall.
I am a porcelain mask.
If I screamed
Would anyone notice I wasn’t art?

2.

In this dream
I am violently pulling the feathers out of a ducks tail.
The duck is a cartoon
And screams inside speech bubbles
Silent and readable.
I see my hands drawn in scratchy pen,
Filled with white bloody feathers.

3.

In this dream
I am throwing up into my hands.
All that comes up are wet yellow roses.

4.

In this dream
I am performing in a show
Someone comes,
They want to take pictures
But it’s not that type of show.

5.

In this dream
I’m cracking eggs
But each time they split.
All I find inside is dirty blue flour.
It clumps on my hands
Damp with steam.

Posted by Alissa McCourt at 11:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

“Censor the body and you censor breath and speech at the same time…write yourself. You body must be heard. Only then will the immense resources of the unconscious spring forth�
-Helene Cixous

--------------
“As human beings in the developed world become more and more blind to the signals sent out by the body, they become more and more dependant upon the silver screen (…) it is only real to them when they see it on TV.�
-Germaine Greer
---------------
“Feminism is a movement to end sexism, sexist exploitation, and oppression�
-bell hooks

.................................................................

I’m angry. I’m tired, but mostly I’m just pissed off. Its time to be angry again. I’m having a difficulty, a difficulty that comes with the realization that I am not in control, the difficulty that accompanies the unpacking of an internalized structure of thinking, a patriarchal construct of knowledge.

Existing to deepen my sadness is the knowledge that the institutions governing traditional representations of women in the media not only know that these representations are harmful, it is an intentional harm. “A woman’s body is the battlefield where she fights for liberation. It is through her body that oppression works, reifying her, sexualizing her, victimizing her, disabling her� (Greer). How is it possible to come to a state of peace in a media driven culture that turns a profit on female self-hate? “Multi-million dollar industries exploit both her need for reassurance and her need to do something about the way she looks� (Greer).
______________________________________

“Imagine you’re a girl
Just trying to finally come clean
Knowing full well they’d prefer you were dirty
And smiling�
-ani difranco

No matter how beautiful, how successful, how joyful, how giving, how loving, how radiant, how glorious a woman may be, it will never be enough. If there was an end point, a point where finally we could breathe, we could laugh, we could say “look at us! Look how beautiful we are! I’m so glad we invested in all those name brand expensive beauty products and trendy outerware�, if such and endpoint existed, consumerism would suffer. If you are never good enough, you will never stop buying, buying products, buying ideas, buying the dream of acceptance and love that you pray to find in the packaging of your exfoliating cream.
_____________
We are bombarded with “images suggesting that male sexual domination in no way threatens female autonomy or independence� but we know in our bodies (our good bodies) that this in simply not true.
________________________
This shit does matter. _
________________________

Rationalizing and perpetuating images of domination over women negates the possibility that love and liberation will ever exist for women. Justifying abuse with love (The Piano), with religion (Water), with political statements and priorities (No), should no longer be tolerated. These are not arbitrary or innocent representations. (hooks). What do you do when you realize that in truth, there is more profit in perpetuating self-hatred rather than self-actualization?

The world wants us prostituted, silent, and shopping.

________________________________

I’ll tell you what I want.
It’s quite simple.

-I want a space where I am not drowning in representations of love that have taught me to internalize an eroticization and acceptance of abuse under the guise of sexual liberation.
-I want a space where multi million dollar companies who turn a profit by first creating, then exploiting my insecurities do not determine my self worth.
-I want a space where I see women’s bodies represented in a fashion that doesn’t invite consumption, assimilation, and obliteration.

-I want a space that wants me in it.

“What more could women want?
Freedom, that’s what.
Freedom from being the thing looked at rather than the person looking back. Freedom from self-conciousness. Freedom from the duty of sexual stimulation of jaded female appetite, for which no breast ever bulges hard enough and no leg is ever long enough. Freedom from the humiliating insults heaped on us by the top shelf of the newsagents; freedom from rape, whether is is by being undressed verbally by men on the building site…greasily teased by our male workmates, pawed by the boss, used sadistically or against our will by the men we love, or violently terrorized and beaten by a stranger.�
-Greer

“Female power will rush upon us in the persons of women who have nothing to lose, having lost everything already�
-Greer

Take back power, take back control, take back your body.

Posted by Alissa McCourt at 7:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

1.

In this dream
I wake up
I can’t remember if I dreamed.

my eyes widen on the empty space beside me,
the where space I expected to find you
(close against me)

But my bed is vacant,
A distant prairie of flat.

I know
you have left
without saying goodbye.

Again,
I wake up.
Are you still gone?

My eyes catch sight of your back,
Round curved grooves,
And I groan in relief,
Thank god it’s not real.

Anchoring my fingers into your shoulder
I hold the world steady.
I’m so happy you’re here

Again,
I wake up.
Is it real this time?

My eyes dart over your frame
Still pressed against mine
And I cry out
“why did you leave the first time?
Don’t let this be morning,
You’ve already gone�

You wake with an irritated ire
And you proceed to role over
Spiraling like a dolphin.

I watch you from the ceiling
Floating just above your face
i am the ghost that kisses your hair.

You shout in a whisper
Never meeting my eyes
All the reasons for which
I make you sick.

Apparently,
There are many reasons
For why you indeed are leaving me.

Again.
I wake up.
Why bother wondering?

It’s your back again.
My eyes press spongelike
Against the aura of your skin,
Soaking up the “could be good� oil rust.

I twist tight
Letting the dirty water tears flow
Cutting strange valleys in the sweat of my face
I quiver
And I dig my fingers tighter into you

Waiting for the inevitable moment
When one of us will
wake up
And not want us
anymore.

Again,
I wake up.

2.

In this dream
I am seated in a football stadium
It’s dark
I think they do ballet here.

All around me are strangers seated
Staring at a wooden stage.
A long line of women appear
Actresses, I think.
Look! It’s my mentor
She’s in a black lace corset
Why is she wearing that?
It’s not like her.

I think they are going to sing
A musical number maybe? from one of those shows?
You know? The ones with all the sex? And the corsets?
The ones with the happy ending?

But instead, they stand there
As if the music has forgotten to start
In total silence, in long rows
They stare down at us in our seats.
I fear they are deaf.

Then,
A noise breaks the tension
It’s coming from my chest

I look down
I know that it’s my heart
It’s ringing.
I forgot to put it on silent.
Damn it.

I freeze
And hope that no one can see
Through my ribcage
And know that I am the idiot this time
Who can’t keep be bothered to put her
Organs on vibrate.

3.

In this dream
You are dead
I don’t know how you died
It doesn’t seem important I guess.

I am sitting at the table in the dining room.
Only it was the patio table from our sandbox
Covered in yellow plastic,
A table cloth with small bibbed ducks.

A woman is there.
She thinks she is my mother,
But I have my suspicions.

she is putting down clipboards
telling me to sign in the box.
I don’t see a box
I don’t think there’s anything on it at all.

I don’t know what the paper is for,
Is it a confession? A proclamation? Certification?
Perhaps I should ask.

I watch myself stare.
My nostrils start to hum like a vacuum,
Sucking my vision into the first person.

Someone important is dead.
You.
But I can’t remember your name.
I think you’re my sister.
Sisters are slippery commodities these days.

I don’t want to do this alone.
But I can’t ask you for help.
You’re dead.
And it seems rude to ask favors
When I can’t even remember your name.

4.

In this dream
I am running down a sidewalk.
I cannot stop.
I know, if I stop running
The world will come crashing down,
Smashing into 25 pieces
Of Plexiglas.

But as I run
The sidewalk shifts
It warps like a rubber band
Snapping back and throwing me
Onto the ground.
I claw my way forward
Standing up
Only to be tossed off my feet.
I keep going,
Falling and fighting
Again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again.

5.

In this dream
I’m lying face down
On my bed.
My mouth is buried in mattress
There are no sheets
Except the ones I’ve erected
As a tent
Against the arctic snow
Of my room.
My kitchen is a pile of snow.

I lie quietly
Unmoving.

My heart is a foot,
A heavy heeled brown hiking boot
Just like the one I tore the sole off of
When I was walking yesterday.

The rubber soul flaps like lips now.
But I don’t listen.
I don’t want to hear the opinions
Of someone who traffics in dirt.

My heart is this boot
It is frightened.
It’s attempting to kill me
By helping me live.

It stomps through my rib caged
It clomps buoyantly against the mattress
Knocking,
Asking to be let out.

I can’t talk to you right now.
Rest already.

6.

In this dream
Everyone exists in animation
Colored in cartoon.

I am standing in a park
With the sun on my face.
A field stretches in front of me,
Crowded, joyful,
Filled with picnics, children, people
They exist as shifting blurs,
They are not in my way.
In fact,
I do not exist for them.
They cannot see me.

I realize
This is a dream.
I’ve heard of this happening.
I wonder, now that I know there are no boundaries
Of reality to fight,
What do I do?

I stand quietly.
Then I take off sprinting
Racing past the grass with my head tilted back
Boldfaced staring down the sun.
I compress and leap
Throwing myself into the arms of the air.

Moving through the sky
Is the same as moving through water,
It holds you up
But only if you know how to fight.

Tomorrow,
I hope I am reborn
As a kite.

Posted by Alissa McCourt at 11:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Posted by Alissa McCourt at 6:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Damages: unknown

Damn these nights of self medicated torturous blunder
Finding yourself beneath this weight again:
As if turning on the faucet
Will save you from him.

Too late
This one penetrated deep.
Like an ill timed burn.

Posted by Alissa McCourt at 10:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

An expiration date:

Once again
Tucking myself in 3 am
Stuck on my back as usual
Is this sex or a sacrifice?
I’ll be dead afterward either way.

Posted by Alissa McCourt at 10:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Growing back limbs

I carried you with me today.
The smell of latex congealing in my hair;
Funny,
I don’t remember getting it there.

Sleeping on a pile of sheets;
I haven’t set the bed since company came.
You’ve given new meaning to that phrase.

This temporary occupation
Has seriously fucked with my emotional insulation
And you know,
It’s cold in here now.

I hope soul scabs over
As quickly as skin.

Posted by Alissa McCourt at 10:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Superhero’s don’t hide dirty dishes above the sink

There is a horn like a pitch pipe
Sounding a G G G G
Beneath my window.
And it’s waiting for my cue…

The anticipation of this song
Is long past due.

So I’m just going to turn out my light
and pretend I’m strong enough
to turn off my phone.
Reminding myself
An unsung song is better
Mourned alone.

Posted by Alissa McCourt at 10:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Overgrown Algae: a conversation of hair

My hair is alive
Though,
It would like me to suspect otherwise.
Thread-like leeches;
Parasitic in nature;
Undulating in brunette tangles
Medusa inverted
With the screaming snakes mouths
Inside my skull.
I’d like to bleed you myself
But I can’t help but treat you
As a limb
With the frightened respect I owe
To a bone.

Posted by Alissa McCourt at 10:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I finally got to sleep last night: dream logic

In this dream
I am above a crowd,
Onstage.
Behind a wall with a glass window.
I slap my hand against the pane
It is covered with smeary grime
And as my hand slides down,
Cutting a path through the slippery soot
The crowd laughs and jeers in ugly excitement
I don’t quite understand.

Again, I grope the window
And they holler slimy encouragements
Acting as though
My struggle to see them is as good as a strip tease

I move again,
Frantically,
Slapping the window
I feign struggle.
My fingerprints leave stripes
And I listen
to the sickening pleasure
My performance of entrapment
Provokes.

2.

In this dream,
Here is a machine all around me,
It’s the electric chair
Only
it’s the one you sit in to get your hair trimmed
You know, the one in the beauty salon.

All around me are wires
A million buttons and needles
Tiny switches with tiny red labels
Unreadable
I must have forgotten my glasses.

I am awaiting for an execution,
Or a hair trim,
(which ever comes first)
But I’m only nervous about
Getting to death on time
I hate being late.

She comes in,
She’s a lady I sewed costumes with once
Only now
She’s only a pair of pink hands
Her body is amorphous
I’m not sure it’s actually there.

She tells me
That I can do it myself if I like.
I try
But the electric shavers on wires
(dangling like puppets)
Won’t even take off my split ends.

“here�,She says,
stepping behind me where I cannot see her.
“Let’s see what this switch does…�

3.

In this dream
I am driving down the highway
In the blue black night.
But the highway is a wooden dock
Stretching out across a vast black expanse of water.

Looking out the window
I see waves
Frozen like a block of ice
White tipped like those Japanese’s wood prints
You used to hang framed in the hallway.
They slide across the waters surface
Like terrible sharp claws
Without ever crashing.

I see the end of the dock.
But I keep driving
Maybe it’s not the end after all.
But it is.

We fly off into the open air
For a moment I am flying
Frozen in the sky
Like a wave
Until I feel what must be water.

The car tires explode
And my nose is filled
With the hot acidy smell of burning rubber

When I look down,
I know I will see ribbons of wrinkled black tire
Melted into the skin of my breasts
And hanging like shredded skin.

4.

In this dream
I am tossing and turning on my bed
Pulling my sheets as I flop fish like
-my sheets are muslin and gauze
(Bandages)
I realize that I am cocooned
I mummified myself.
I know of course,
That I am a piece of my own art
And I just created myself.

I smell wet clay.
I think it’s the stuffing in my pillow.

5.

In this dream
I’m making sandwiches in my kitchen
Only its not my house,
It’s that garage next door
The one where we looked at each other naked
When we where children
And realized that our bodies weren’t as alike as we thought.
This time, it has a stove.

I think I’m a mother
But I haven’t given birth to any children.

I’m lining up brown paper lunches
In long rows over the garage floor.

I take a bite of a sandwich
It splits open in my hands
One end peeling up, the other peeling down
Blooming like a flower

But my mouth is full of gasoline like acid
Hot stinging bitter tang
Fuzzy burn.

It must be the tomato.

6.

In this dream
There is a bee
The honey looking hornet type.
Its close up in focus, as if under a microscope lense.

I see it in flashes, in time with the bang of a heavy door slamming
*slam (head) *slam (top view) *slam (fractured eye)

All this is underscored by a heavy screeching buzzing
Like a high pitched rusty chain,
You know, the kind of chain saw they used to clean your teeth at the dentist?
That buzzing polish brush?

I don’t want to do what I’m doing.
I want to stop
But I cannot.
With I tweezer, I see that someone (maybe me)
Is peeling back a layer of “skin� on the bees back.
It cracks like the wax paper peanut skin.
The buzzing continues.
I really wish I could stop.

7.

In this dream
I am playing in my backyard
But it’s not my backyard
It’s an enormous Candy Land board game.
Gumdrop pink

I see myself from a birds eye view
Running up a neon hard candy green bridge
As I reach the crest
I see an enormous baby blue whale
Beached on the grass.
Its looks like the toy
I buried in my sandbox
And never found again.

I watch for a minute
Then race to join the other children
Climbing its tail
And sliding down its glistening sides

Posted by Alissa McCourt at 11:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Eurydice learned the first time

Door open into daylight:
Discovery of your form framed by brick.

Damn these nights
of irreversible irresistible stupidity.

Wordlessly ascending,
our foot echo reverberating
in my stairwell

door knob click
each hinge in accordance
“can I kiss you yet?�

Posted by Alissa McCourt at 11:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

This is just a story…
By Alissa Z McCourt

Trinh T. Minh-ha, in her work, “Grandma’s Story�, bell hooks, in “Talking Back� and Virginia Woolf, in “A Room of One’s Own� illustrate the importance of storytelling and self-expression for women, discuss the importance of legacy for women storytellers, and discuss how women’s voices are silenced by a patriarchal society. How can women claim space for their stories and their history in a society where they are absent from history? Where are the women role models for younger generations? How can a woman’s legacy be cultivated and celebrated? Will a women’s legacy, a woman’s artistic history, alleviate the younger generation’s fear of taking up space and making sound with their writing and their art?
-----------

Who is the storyteller and how does she bridge the gap between story and history? The storyteller is the “living memory of her time, her people� (Minh-ha 74 To tell a story is to relate the experience of a culture and their individual and collective lives. Paula Gunn Allen states that “the oral tradition is more than a record of a people’s culture. It is the creative source of their collective and individual selves� (395). Because cultures are not homogenous, the search for a collective story can be a troublesome notion. As Patricia Hampl voices, “we all have a stake in how such stories are told� (Hampl 18). However, a collective story is similar to a memoir, and a memoir is less concerned with specific, individual stories than it is with trying to capture an experience.
..................

Speaking and storytelling is essential for women because speaking is “an act of resistance� that challenges the dominant system that “would render us nameless and voiceless� (hooks 57). To speak requires courage. Women’s power is feared and dreaded by the male sex because it is a power they lack control over. They fear its power of destruction for “her words are like fire. They burn and destroy. It is however, only by burning that they lighten� (Minh-ha 76).

During discussion, we mentioned how the uniqueness and richness of stories are lost in the effort to “westernize� or define storytelling in terms of the masculine. ““A good story�, another western male asserted, “must have a beginning that rouses interest, a succession of events that is orderly and complete, a climax that informs the story’s point, and an end that leaves the mind at rest� (Minh-ha 83).

This goal oriented, patriarchal view of the story that bares resemblance to the male experience of sex is detrimental to the act of story telling because it is to assume there is a fundamental separation between content and structure. In this categorization between “a good story� and bad stories, a story becomes “just a story� and its value is called into question. (Minh-ha 79). Women must have the courage to write “as women write, not as men write� and to not compromise their values to a structure and a system not build to withstand her stories (Woolf 74). Woolf validates and admires women writers of the past in her words “what genius, what integrity it must have required in face of all that criticism, in the midst of that purely patriarchal society to hold fast to the things as they saw it without shrinking� (Woolf 74).

It seems to me that the most important goal of storytelling is to claim our voices and re-tell stories as � (we) think (they) should be told,� because to allow lies to live on in place of our own truths is to allow our history to be perverted. Virginia Woolf relates that women is “all but absent from history� and this is a fact that must change (48). It is time for courage. It is time to claim a space for women’s voice historically and a space for women storytellers to find their stories and find a history

.........................................................
In the transmission of stories across generations, the “very power of transmission� is just as valuable as the stories (Minh-ha 134). The act of transmission creates a bond between women, because in the passing of a story that spans generations, the receiver inherits the responsibility and the joy of reproducing their own unique copy and the power to continue the transfer. The story is part of a culture, greater than any one person is, yet at the same time it belongs to whoever hears and tells it. Minh-ha expresses the responsibility of transmission in her pledge, “I memorize, recognize and name my sources, not to validate my voice through the voice of an authority…but to evoke her and sing� (Minh-ha 73). Trinh-ha asserts that women, through the continuation of stories, keep alive the legacy and the memories of our mothers and grandmothers. Stories and the women who tell them do not die; they live forever through the significance of the retelling by each new generation of women.

Virginia Woolf expresses a similar view in her words,

“my belief is that this poet who never wrote a word…still lives….in you and me, and in many other great women who are not here tonight, for they are washing up the dishes…but she lives; for great poets do not die… they need only the opportunity of walk among us in the flesh� (Woolf 154).

The figures I continue to look up to as my personal storytellers and mentors are Kari Margolis, my tangible theatre mentor and master teacher, and Ani Difranco, my symbolic, goddess like mentor.

Ani Difranco, as a storyteller, had lyrics that filled me, brimming, with the “desire to emulate...the desire to emulate the heroine who tells of the other heroines� (Minh-ha).

Like bell hooks describes, “it has been difficult for me to claim “writer� as part of that which identifies and shapes my everyday reality� (hooks 57). I have, like bell hooks, had difficulty letting go of my fear of saying the wrong thing.

When reading bell hooks piece, “Talking Back� I had a moment of revelation while reading the following paragraph:
“

The fear of exposure, the fear that one’s deepest emotions and innermost thoughts will be dismissed as mere nonsense, felt by so many young girls keeping diaries, holding and hiding speech, seems to me now one of the barriers that women have always needed and still need to destroy so that we re no longer pushed into secrecy or silence� (hooks 56).

f I had had the courage as an adolescent to speak up, to not allow my vocal sprit to be broken, if I had not associated my thoughts with shame, how different would my childhood experience have been?

How I have censored my own voice as a woman? How can we as women get past the difficult task of naming and defining our ideas and thoughts to liberate our voices? How many other girls in my school kept secret journals and scribbled on bits of napkin scrunched into their pants pockets and tucked in-between the pages of notebooks?

Why do women, (why did I) turn to written language in my desire to speak and express myself? Hampl beautifully states that, “It still comes as a shock to realize that I don’t write about what I know, but in order to find out what I know� (hampl 27).

Part of what drove me into this isolated, silenced, secret expression was my desire to avoid “being remade and destroyed� by my peers, and the other authority figures in my life (freeman 216).

During puberty, as it is during puberty that it becomes necessary to perpetrate one’s gender, women who “seek self-expression and self actualization� and reject the idea that a woman is defined through “her relationship to a man� are punished.
These women are viewed as freaks and not considered to be truly women. “Madness� is the diagnosis of females who fail to learn the right way to speak their mind (hooks 209).
So intense was, and to some degree is, my fear of doing, saying, or being the wrong thing, the wrong kind of woman, that I was unable to analyze what was happening to me. It is only now, in retrospect that I am able to take these childhood anxieties and wounds and use them to “move forward…in the process of self-realization� (hooks 209). It is through feminist theory that I found, and hope other girls will find, a healing place. Looking though my life and at my childhood with my new feminist lenses and mindset, I have gained extensive knowledge about myself and my position as a woman is in the society I inhabit.

The struggle for women as artist I believe is to “finally realize that their pain comes not just because they do not conform, but because they do not want to conform…there is nothing particularly wrong with them. They just don’t fit into this kind of society. The task for such women who make this discovery then is to attempt to reach out in friendship and comradely to other women who struggle in silence. These self realized women “ must move away from the isolation which has been their protection and help their younger sisters avoid its perils� (freeman 218). In a culture that sets up women to view each other as the enemy, for they are competing commodities among men, women must learn to see past this system that would “set her against her mother…her grandmother…her daughter� (Minh-ha 76). Once these connections and communities have been forged, the task remains to organize for the liberation of self-expression.

As Nancy Maires states, our task is to “conceptualize a world that wants (us) in it,� a world where women’s voices are embraced and celebrated (Mairs 121).

Posted by Alissa McCourt at 2:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

bell hooks
in her work, “Talking Back� analyzes the silence imposed upon women in adolescence and its influence on her as a writer.
She discusses her childhood and the women that filled her with the desire to speak and claim language and a voice of her own. She remembers that “it was in this world of woman speech, loud talk, angry words, women with tongues quick and sharp, tender sweet tongues, touching our world with their words, that I made speech my birthright-and the right to voice, to authorship a privilege I would not b denied� ( hooks 56).

However, she discovers that in order to find her voice, she needs to talk, and talking earns her an “endless� series of punishments intended to silence her (55). She discovers writing as a way to secretly capture language and speech.

However, she hides these writings and explains that

“The fear of exposure, the fear that one’s deepest emotions and innermost thoughts will be dismissed as mere nonsense felt by so many young girls keeping diaries, holding and hiding speech, seems to me now one of the barriers that women have always needed and still need to destroy so that we are no longer pushed into secrecy or silence� (56).

In the end, she accepts that to claim the right and power to speak is a courageous act that challenges the oppressive powers that would render women silent.

In order to “claim this legacy of defiance, of will, of courage, affirming my link to my female ancestors who were bold and daring in their speech� she writes under the pseudonym bell hooks, a family name (57). She concludes that moving from “silence into speech� and the liberation of the voice is essential to the feminist struggle to move from object to subject.

Posted by Alissa McCourt at 2:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The Safety of Screening

Slow drag nicotine moan of your
Hello
over the phone.

Nervous flutter of paper wings
Pathetically
Escaping, into your snare.

Your hello
Renders an impossibility
To my kitten murmured
No

Posted by Alissa McCourt at 8:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I fear moths.

Why does a simple flip of your hand
Resembling –his hand
Send me reeling
As if he lives
Disembodied
In your fingertips.

Forgive my flinch
Those hands-his
Rasp off limbs
in their caresses
and I am still so
damn
scabbed

Posted by Alissa McCourt at 8:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The fruit fondler :

What swelling hot pressure water balloon,
Sending hot cough sparks up my throat,
Sends me reeling
Into these two a.m.insanities?

Be this love, or rabies,
The froth is a fact.

Posted by Alissa McCourt at 8:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)