Eurydice Confesses

They have it all wrong.
Nymphs are carefree, never careless. Stepping on that serpent was no mistake.
Anything to escape Orpheus
the endless strumming, his infernal singing.
How I longed to break the lyre over his golden head.

I prefer the songs of the Underworld.
The murmur of souls, swaying on the bank of the Styx. And Cerberus, muzzles snuffling softly in sleep.
Persephone misses her family, and often asks me to tea. Better still, Hades has a library.

Sylvia Santiago

perpetually coming…

Hot female flesh on hot female flesh. And it doesn’t go anywhere: flesh. Flesh. For the cunt opens and closes, a perpetual motion machine, a scientific wonder, perpetually coming, opening and closing on itself to ecstasy or nausea-does it, you, ever tire? Roses die faster. Roses die faster than you, you whores in my heart.

Kathy Acker
Empire of the Senseless

written simply for itself

There is only one thing that is written simply for itself, and it is the shopping list. It serves to remind you of what you need to buy, and when you have made your purchases you can destroy it, because nobody else needs it. Everything else you write, you write to say something to someone.

Umberto Eco
Il senso della vita
(The meaning of life)
Trans. Peedeel

History – FORGETTING TO WRITE ABOUT WOMEN!

History is not a long series of centuries in which men did all the interesting/important things and women stayed home and twiddled their thumbs in between pushing out babies, making soup and dying in childbirth.

History is actually a long series of centuries of men writing down what they thought was important and interesting, and FORGETTING TO WRITE ABOUT WOMEN. It’s also a long series of centuries of women’s work and women’s writing being actively denigrated by men. Writings were destroyed, contributions were downplayed, and women were actively oppressed against, absolutely.

But the forgetting part is vitally important. Most historians and other writers of what we now consider “primary sources” simply didn’t think about women and their contribution to society. They took it for granted, except when that contribution or its lack directly affected men.

This does not in any way mean that the female contribution to society was in fact less interesting or important, or complicated, simply that history — the process of writing down and preserving of the facts, not the facts/events themselves — was looking the other way.

Tansy Rayner Roberts
gender issues
Historically Authentic Sexism in Fantasy

soul consuming

Both desire and anger have the potential to become soul consuming. The promise of consumption is inherently tied to the act of eating in the poem, where

I put my tongue,
my hands to,
the women whose hands
widen and fill me,
whose tongues suck salt
to the surface
of my skin.
The act of murder as I dream it
is distinct from the terror
of my enemies.
They cannot imagine
the bone speed of my rage,
the strawberry sweetness
of my revenge
measured cold
and bitter sharp
behind my tongue

Eating, sucking, and licking evoke more than oral intercourse. (Dorothy)Allison seemingly draws strength from skin’s salty surface, reinforcing sexual identity and the sense of belonging to a lesbian community. For Allison, her lovers nourish the body’s emotional landscape much in the same way that food nourishes her physically. However, in this poem, it does not automatically follow that food and affective registers of emotion always fill the body with comfort and warmth. The first two tastes mentioned are incredibly disparate, signalling two diverse emotions. The saltiness of the skin suggests desire and lovemaking, while strawberry sweetness is contrasted with the satisfying taste of revenge. The fruitlike sweetness of revenge is described as something that is “measured cold and bitter sharp,” while at face value, salt suggests an abundance of sweat on hot skin. It is not possible to “measure” the taste of salt on her lover; it is vast, infinite, and found everywhere. And yet the taste of revenge, and the “bone speed of my rage” is measured behind her tongue, strategically subject to careful calculation.

Jaime Cantrell
Put A Taste of the South in your Mouth: Carnal appetites and intersextionality

expanded my understanding of what was possible between human beings

Between the ages of 12 and 15, I spent at least four hours a day reading stories about sex between women. My time was divided between my father’s Letters to Penthouse collection, and Xena: Warrior Princess and Star Trek: Voyager fan fiction websites. It wasn’t just that these stories turned me on. It was that, whether they were about Ancient Greek warriors or varsity cheerleaders, these stories transported me from a small town where I was a scared, isolated lesbian to a fantasy world where women acted on their desires and were rewarded for it with love, community, and orgasms.

Once I got a girlfriend and started having sex of my very own, I found that I was no longer interested in those stories. I was not a skinny, perky-breasted woman who perpetually smelled like roses. The sex I had didn’t involve fireplaces, or perfectly timed, simultaneous climaxes. Sometimes it wasn’t even good. I no longer needed fantasy. What I needed was reality.

Thankfully, I found lesbian literature. Authors like Dorothy Allison, Jeanette Winterson, and Rebecca Brown wrote about women who had jobs and families and lives that resembled something I could aspire and relate to. That these women had sex with each other was just part of the picture, but it was an important part. One that shocked, excited and ultimately expanded my understanding of what was possible between human beings as well as the possibilities of my own desires.

Amy Gall
Let’s Talk About Sex: Allison, Myles, and Woolf

I become fantasy

I do not have fantasies. Fantasy opens me up; I become fantasy. I am the dangerous daughter, thigh-stroking, soft-tongued lover, the pit, the well, the well of horniness, laughter rolling up out of me like gravy boiling over the edge of a pan. I become the romantic, the mystic, the one without shame, rocking myself on the hop of a rock, a woman as sharp as coral. I make in my mind the muscle that endures, tame rage and hunger to spirit and blood. I become the rock. I become the knife.

Dorothy Allison
The Muscles of the Mind

Don’t do it –

Don’t do it – the supermarket have had a fresh delivery of toilet rolls!!

I love your little breasts

I love your little breasts
sized for my hands
waiting to be caressed

fingers tracing the curve
from breast to belly to –
I love it when you moan

eyes closing, breath catching
you feel my invasion
as if burned by fire…

Sunday Role Play