Tag: Janelle Thea Sorroche

Biko

Poetry by | October 11, 2009

your underarms
are bare and wet
as your old ladle
patiently danced
inside the giant kawa
the other strap
slipped
from your shoulders
your skin
cracked
dry like the desert
your armpits
tired and wet
maybe you still smelled
like last Saturday night
when he came home
his body swaying
to his own raging music
burying his face
in your armpits
his breath
like sliced ginger
his hand
a spear
around your face
forgetting you were once
the queen
of his kingdom
your ladle danced again
your armpits wet
your biko
wasted –
a sweet decay

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Gender In Literature

Nonfiction by | June 28, 2009

The story of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The Birthmark” expresses how women are defined as “the other” and men as the powerful sex.

Attics do not house humans. They are wasted space. Women are considered half monsters — and they are wasted. A woman inhabits the attic; literally and metaphorically, she becomes a madwoman, both as a writer and a character.

The fact is, Nathaniel Hawthorne is male; and men don’t glorify women.

Nathaniel Hawthorne did not directly say that Georgina is a monster. Only by the way she is presented in the story will it then become clear that literature had always been confined to male writers and male characters. Georgina’s birthmark embodies the unforgivable flaws of the female body and her position as a woman. She is not any different from Dr. Frankenstein’s monster; and the only way to kill the female monster is to destroy male literature.

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Gravity

Poetry by | March 9, 2008

Climb a coconut tree
With no thought of gravity to pull you down
Let your feet grip tightly to its body
Forget your children
Crawling on the ground
Like beasts waiting to be fed on your sagging breasts
As your skirt calmly sways in the wind
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