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    • Radical Lesbian Feminism in Practice
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    • Unplugging Your Inner Patriarchy
    • She Who Carries the Seeds
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    • Naked in the Woods
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    • Feminism in the Work of Michele Pred
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    • The Social, Cultural, and Political Necessity of Anne Sexton
    • An Interview with Sharon Doubiago
    • Confrontation with the Rapist
    • Defense Attorney's Lament
    • Entertainment for Men
    • Greve Series / White Works
    • A Review of Donna Prinzmetal's Snow White
    • Laws of Kissing If Newton Were a Woman
    • Two Poems by Judith Terzi
    • One of the Cronettes
    • Inspiration
  • Previous Issues
    • Voices of Feminism >
      • Issue 16: "Feminisms" >
        • Toward a Theory and Praxis of Sustainable Feminism
        • Feminisms: Inclusion as a Radical Act
        • Grace
        • Three Ekphrastic Poems
        • Braids
        • Medusa
        • Who's Coming Along: Denise Duhamel, Maureen Seaton, and Collaboration Today
        • We had rituals we didn't know what for
        • A Brief History of a Feminist Mind
        • Marge Piercy: On Feminism, Politics, and Writing
        • Lack of Cover
        • Refresh
        • Crabby Apples
        • A Place of Storytelling and Sustenance: Molly Sutton Kiefer's Nestuary
        • When She Was Two
        • Margaret Sanger Speaks
        • A Song for Maman Dantor
        • Listen
        • Abiquiu
        • Changing
        • Barbie at Rest
        • When We Crack, Let's Do It Together
        • Duel
        • Domestic Constellation
        • America the Beautiful
        • Death of a Valkyrie
        • Old Woman Who Grieves War
        • I Read My Death in the Winter Stars
        • Femenina Sube: My Aquarian Age
        • The Straight Mind at Work at the Heart of Queer Theory
        • Journal: In the Bois de Vincennes
        • Landlady Emily Carr
        • Scenario For a New Agenda
        • I Could Do That
      • Issue 15: "Animal Instincts" >
        • Women. Horse. Mountain.
        • My Pre-Feminist Animal Instincts
        • Our Animal Selves
        • Presage
        • Animal Self
        • Comings and Goings
        • And the Hawk Flies
        • Birds of a Feather
        • Proper Adornment
        • Reverie
        • Algonquin Anthology
        • Sea Stars
        • Immortal
        • Spirit Horse
        • First Cousins: A Suite of Poems
        • Bird of Prey
        • Crows
        • Harpy
        • Snake I Come
        • Approaching the Gate
        • Horses in Winter
        • "Domestic Terrorist"
        • Homeless
        • Displacement
        • The Mornings After
        • Gust of Win
        • Squirrel Dick
        • Cats
        • Frankie
        • Worms
        • Animal Cracker
        • I Don't Believe in Marriage
        • Drawing on the Dream
        • The Cow with a Human Face
        • Orangutans at the Jardin des Plantes
        • Abattoir
        • In for Life
        • I Am Shark
        • Giving Voice to Bear
        • Threshold Crossing
        • The Mark of the Bear
        • Discernment Is All
        • Bears at Midnight
        • The Musky Scent of Bear
        • Baggage
        • The End of Our Friendship
        • Four Mile River Road: 1 Mile
        • The White Dog
        • White Dog/Blue Pearls
        • Baby Dream #15
        • Baby Dream #39
        • Fish Songs
        • Today I Fished
        • The Surgeon's Territory
        • Boudoir Portrait
        • The First Six Months of Survival
        • P for Patience
        • French Pout
        • My Next Girlfriend
        • Winter Solstice
      • Issue 14: "Preoccupation" >
        • Wheatpastes
        • An Editorial: "It's not time to worry yet."
        • Courage
        • Dispirited
        • Voices
        • Falling
        • Sunset #2
        • Cut You Out
        • Brooding
        • Planetary
        • Sleeping. Dreaming.
        • Drama with the Neighbor
        • Woman to Woman
        • The Conspiracy of Chores
        • Murder
        • White Sunset Through a Mesquite Tree
        • Patricia Cornflake's Lesbian Lifestyle
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        • A Woman Poet's Critique of Words Too Commonly Spoken
        • Memory's Witness
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        • Here We Are
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        • Virtue
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        • Flow
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        • The Devil Finds Work for Idle Hands
        • Occupy Wall Street Poster
        • The Tent
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        • The Making of a Peaceful Death
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        • Cycle
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        • Mindfall
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        • Twins and M/Others: A Survival Story
        • Due Diligence (A.K.A. Cracking Open Her Case)
        • Empirical Evidence
        • Dissociation
        • 27.2727273 Readers
        • The Nomad
        • Manifesto
        • Baby Island
        • Chinatown, Death, and Women
        • Surrounded by Death
        • Where Sanity Returned
        • Whitney
        • In the Shadow of Mumtaz
        • Of Woods
        • The Egg Broke
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        • Threadbare
        • Because We Must Lose You
        • Clock Time
        • Gynosis One: Samhain
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        • Crossing
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      • Issue 12: "Southwestern Voices" >
        • Issue 12 Editorial: "Southwestern Voices"
        • Trojan Horses in the Desert
        • You Can See the Silence
        • Fleeing Oklahoma
        • North Rim, Grand Canyon, AZ
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        • Our Lady
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        • It Has Become Our Will: Onward with Adrienne Rich (1929-2012)
        • A Conversation with bell hooks
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      • Issue 11: "Are Lesbians Going Extinct," #2 >
        • Editorial_11
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        • We Live as Two Lesbians
        • PrognostiKate
        • Dinosaurs & Haircuts: A Performance Monologue
        • To Be Real
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        • Jill Johnston
      • Issue 10: "Are Lesbians Going Extinct?" #1 >
        • Editorials
        • Before and after Sappho: Logos
        • On Living with a Poem for 20 Years: Judy Grahn's "A Woman Is Talking to Death"
        • And Will Rise? Notes on Lesbian ExtinctionNew Page
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        • Letter for Cynthia Rich
        • Dispatches from an Australian Radicalesbianfeminist
        • No Longer Burning
        • Reinvention and the Everyday
        • The Personal is Political
        • Notes on Reinvention and Extinction
        • Dyke on a Haybale: A Lesbian Teen in Kansas Speaks Out
        • Gay Trans and the Queering in Between
        • Lesbian Lament
        • The Inconvenient Truth about Teena Brandon
        • Who Says We're Extinct?
        • She Who
        • Lesbians Going All The Way
        • Trivia Saves Lives
        • Notes on Contributors
      • Issue 9: Thinking of Goddesses >
        • Vulture Medicine Augury
        • When hens were flying and god was not yet born
        • Canoeing our Way back to the Divine Feminine in Taino Spirituality
        • Testify
        • Young Pagan Goddess
        • Goddess is Metaformmic
        • For Want of a Goddess
        • Amaterasu- The Great Eastern Sun Goddess of Peace
        • What is Goddess? Toward an ontology of women giving birth. . .
        • Inanna Comes to Me in a Dream
        • First Blood Well The History of Bleeding
        • The Song of Lilith
        • Freedom Speaks Through Us
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        • Notes on contributors (9)
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        • I Saw a Woman Dance
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        • The Happy Hooker Revisisted
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      • Issue 6: The Art of the Possible >
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        • Returning Home with Mago, the Great Goddess from East Asia
        • Noah's Wife
        • Reclaiming the Spooky: Matilda Joslyn Gage and Mary Daly as Radical Pioneers of the Esoteric
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        • Waiting for Sappho
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        • The Loudest Self
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        • Cunctipotence
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        • Our Lot
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        • Degendering Sex: Undoing Erotic Alienation
        • Seven Stages of Lesbian Desire (What's Truth Got to Do With It?)
        • That Easter
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        • Chloto 1978
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        • Communing with Bears
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The Tent

Cathy Bryant
Picture
So many images come to me when I think of it: the tigerwoman, the tears, the neat passage, the poet, the tent. Most of all, the tent - it's the key to my Occupy experience.

When the movement took over the Peace Gardens in Manchester, I was very excited and proud of them, and desperate to get down there and be a part of it; but a little middle-aged weariness stopped me from rushing to get a sleeping bag and some wellies. I can't camp out - I have arthritis and a weak chest and all sorts of other problems; I'd need more help there than I could give. But my best friend Neil and I agreed that we at least wanted to meet the Occupants and be supportive if we could. The Media were demonising them so much that we were fairly sure that they were good people.

So we loaded up Neil's car with supplies - water was the thing they needed most, their website said, and we took all kinds of food, and some wind-up torches and clean dry socks.

I felt like an agreeably radical version of Santa.

After parking in the city centre - no mean feat - we pushed my trolley, black with bright red cherries on it, down to the Peace Gardens. By chance I had walked to the place the week before Occupy had moved in, when it was a mess of litter and dirt, and I did wonder what state it would be in now.

It was muddy, no question. It was late in the year and damp, and with so many tents - little splotches of colour in oblongs, circles and squares, like a child's shape puzzle - and people, it was bound to get muddier. But there wasn't a scrap of litter, and a neat passage through the encampment had been cleared for pedestrians. The Occupants either got on with what they were doing when people went by or smiled politely.

It seemed, however, that we'd arrived at a bad time. A meeting of sorts was in progress, and everyone was standing together looking earnest and concerned. If they'd had a table and some chairs then the scene would have been the clone of every committee meeting held anywhere since committees began. (They say that if there had been a committee to decide whether or not primitive humans should come down from the trees, we'd still be up and arguing about it. But is there a fairer way of making group decisions?)

Then a girl - a young woman in her twenties, I should say, though to me everyone under forty is a child - came out of a tent, dressed as a tiger. She came over with a smile and welcomed us, and we began to hand over our goodies, with that shame-faced embarrassment that always seems to accompany the giving of gifts to strangers, sadly.

The socks thrilled the woman, whom I'll call Barbara - not her real name. She shook off a boot to show me the socks she was wearing, borrowed from her boyfriend and about a hundred times too big for her tiny feet.

I almost asked, “Why the tiger outfit?” But I once met a poet/singer who performed in a tiger outfit, and when I asked him why, he said, “Because it fits.” There's never going to be a better reason than that, really.

So instead I asked, "What's the meeting about?"

"We've got some problems," Barbara admitted. "One is that some racist political organisations have been attacking the tents. The other is alcohol. We want to be open to everyone, but there's a real problem with drunkenness and aggression if we let any wandering stranger into the camp."

"I hadn't thought of that."

And I hadn't. My worries had been about the cold wet weather, but without walls these kids were at the mercy of every thug who wanted to have a go at them and compromised by any strange drunk who asked for shelter. Say no and be exclusive; say yes and be in danger.

While we had been talking, the meeting ended, and I was pleased to see people looking happier and more relaxed. Some of them came over to me and Barbara.

"What's happening about the alcohol problem?" Barbara asked a bearded man, who smiled at me in a friendly way before answering.

"We've decided to be open to everyone, but on the understanding that it's a dry camp," he explained. "That is to say, people can do what they like in their tents, if they fancy a beer on a cold night, but no public drinking or drunkenness."

I thought that was very reasonable, and I apologised for bringing a bottle of whisky with me for them. They were charming about my apology; they were charming about everything.  Barbara put all our things on the communal table, though I begged her to keep some socks for herself and made her hang on to a pair.

Then she showed me the tent.

"This is our main tent, for everyone," she explained. "We got it out of a skip."

I was bemused. Who puts an expensive tent into a skip?

"Look," she said, pointing to regular large rips in each section. "It was slashed deliberately, so that no one could use or sell it. But we rescued it and patched it up."

And yes, plastic of all kinds, from tarpaulins to carrier bags, had been used to seal the great rips.

This made a big impact on me. Someone had thrown something away and deliberately damaged it, so no one would get something for nothing; the getting or giving of something for nothing is a mortal sin against capitalism. Yet these kids had taken this discarded piece of trash and mended it; and then, instead of selling it, they were sharing it for the good of everyone.

The metaphor is obvious.

At this point I looked round for Neil and was amazed to see him relaxed and chatting with a group of Occupants. Neil is extremely shy, and this was a bit like seeing a hermit in a football crowd.

As we left, we were given some typed sheets explaining the aims of the movement. One of the biggest criticisms of Occupy was that "they didn't know what they were protesting about". However, anyone I asked seemed quite clear regional distinctions aside: corporate accountability, the need for some compassion in economic models, and a social programme that upholds basic human rights. Admittedly the typed sheets were misspelled and badly written. But the message was clear enough.

As I left I called, "Thank you," to the camp.

"Thank you," smiled a young man. "You've really brightened up the camp!"

 I thought that was a lovely thing to say.

A couple of weeks went by and the weather grew colder and wetter. The media had split into two camps when it came to Occupy: on the one hand they were dirty layabout hippies wanting free handouts; on the other they were well-intentioned peaceful protesters who represented the majority of us - the 99%, as the slogan said, though even I thought that figure was a little on the high side.

Neil and I headed for Occupy Manchester again with fresh supplies. It was a grim, grey day with a biting wind, and most of the Occupants were in their tents. I recognised one figure, though - a talented local poet, often troubled and tormented, but always worth listening to. I went over and said “Hi” and talked for a bit, but he looked terribly desolate. I didn't want to ask what was wrong in case he broke down. Besides, it was none of my business anyway. 

But at least I had tried to express my appreciation of what the Occupants were doing. Like many people I felt that they represented me and were undergoing all sorts of privations and problems on our behalf.

After a while I joined Neil, who was talking to a young man I hadn't seen on our last visit. He was looking at our supplies.

"I wouldn't bother if I were you," he said in confidential tones. "Some of us are thinking of leaving. There have been some problems...we might set up somewhere else."

I nodded and thanked him for the info, but I wanted to see and know more.

"I'd really like to see Barbara," I said. "Is she about?"

"Well..." said the young man. "She is, but she's had a drink."

I thanked him, and went to Barbara's tent.

She had indeed had a drink, and she was crying her eyes out. Her boyfriend had dumped her, and the authorities wanted to take her children into care, she wept. She was wearing normal clothes this time, and I could see how painfully thin she was, pelvis like a wishbone, face all sharp angles under the tears. I wished I could have donated some of my spare fat to her! She looked older than I had remembered, or perhaps she was just overloaded with suffering.

She had a friend with her who seemed kind and concerned, and tried to get Barbara to eat and keep warm. We left our supplies, again begging her to keep some for herself.

I hugged her, just once, and my tears met hers.

As we left the camp she came out with all sorts of dire predictions, including plans to close the Peace Gardens and build on the area. We nodded, but didn't really believe it. The Peace Gardens are one of the loveliest landmarks in the city, and it would be crazy to get rid of them.

The struggle continued for a while, but eventually the Occupants left. The media managed one last malicious lie: they took their photos at a meal break during the clean-up of the camp, rather than afterwards. Thus the Occupants were made to look like litterbugs.

The movement didn't die, though, and still has a cohesive presence online. I wonder about the people involved, and how it will affect them. If it's anything like the demonstrations of my youth, some members will grow cynical and see such movements as naive and woolly-minded; some will feel that they've done their bit and have little political input afterwards; some will tone down their activities but remain supportive (this is where I am, I hope) - and some will forge lifelong friendships and spend their whole lives finding ways to campaign for a better world.

And good luck to them all.

I hope they remember the tent; the damaged rubbish that was patched up and transformed into the warm heart of a community. And I hope that Barbara's heart is mended, and that her tiger spirit returns to shine through the city rain. We need people like her and the other Occupants. The City Council has just announced plans to remodel the whole area where the camp was, and in none of the proposals do the Peace Gardens survive.


Working notes

The theme of (pre)occupation grabbed me at once. If I hadn't been preoccupied with feminism and politics then I wouldn't have become involved in the Occupy movement - one's preoccupations lead to activism. There is a creeping sense that we have no right to exist in our own space - any official body can rope off any stretch of anywhere and we'll all keep away voluntarily, without any explanation of the necessity for being limited. Simply walking down a street will be filmed on camera, and there are special programs to pick up on any 'unusual' behaviour - such as stopping to smell the flowers. One thing I love about the Occupy movement is its reclamation of our places for us - cities, towns, villages, the country.

About the author

Picture
Cathy Bryant won the 2012 Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Prize for the worst opening line of a novel, and is a former blogger for the Huffington Post. Her stories and poems have been published all over the world in such publications as Prole, Women Writers, and Melusine. As well as winning the Bulwer-Lytton, in 2012 Cathy won the Sampad 'Inspired by Tagore' Contest, the Malahat Review Monostich Contest, and the Swanezine Poetry Contest. She co-edits the annual anthology Best of Manchester Poets and her collection, Contains Strong Language and Scenes of a Sexual Nature, was published recently. Contact Cathy at cathy@cathybryant.co.uk


"We are volcanoes. When we women offer our experience as our truth, as human truth, all the maps change.
There are new mountains." (Ursula K. Le Guin, 1986)
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    • Morning Song
    • Radical Expression(s)
    • Radical: A Tribute to Barbara Mor
    • Radical Lesbian Feminism in Practice
    • Abe Louise Young: A Suite of Poems
    • Capacity
    • Plastic Swimming Caps
    • Eris: The Radical Feminine Awakens
    • Ascension of St. Thomas: The Sensual Immortals
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    • Some Women
    • Hunting Woman
    • Unplugging Your Inner Patriarchy
    • She Who Carries the Seeds
    • Allison Merriweather: A Suite of Images
    • Localized Deafness: A Suite of Poems
    • Naked in the Woods
    • An Interview with Carol Anne Douglas
    • Imagining Differently: Revisiting Radical Feminism
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    • Who the Hell Is Rosie Méndez?
    • First Responder Who Only Fainted During Training Videos
    • Index of Jobs for Women
    • Screwnomics
    • Menstruation
    • Merkin Art: A Suite of Pussies
    • "A Witch, A Cat Woman": Cat Woman's Patriarchal Roots
    • Feminism in the Work of Michele Pred
    • Lucky Girl
    • The Social, Cultural, and Political Necessity of Anne Sexton
    • An Interview with Sharon Doubiago
    • Confrontation with the Rapist
    • Defense Attorney's Lament
    • Entertainment for Men
    • Greve Series / White Works
    • A Review of Donna Prinzmetal's Snow White
    • Laws of Kissing If Newton Were a Woman
    • Two Poems by Judith Terzi
    • One of the Cronettes
    • Inspiration
  • Previous Issues
    • Voices of Feminism >
      • Issue 16: "Feminisms" >
        • Toward a Theory and Praxis of Sustainable Feminism
        • Feminisms: Inclusion as a Radical Act
        • Grace
        • Three Ekphrastic Poems
        • Braids
        • Medusa
        • Who's Coming Along: Denise Duhamel, Maureen Seaton, and Collaboration Today
        • We had rituals we didn't know what for
        • A Brief History of a Feminist Mind
        • Marge Piercy: On Feminism, Politics, and Writing
        • Lack of Cover
        • Refresh
        • Crabby Apples
        • A Place of Storytelling and Sustenance: Molly Sutton Kiefer's Nestuary
        • When She Was Two
        • Margaret Sanger Speaks
        • A Song for Maman Dantor
        • Listen
        • Abiquiu
        • Changing
        • Barbie at Rest
        • When We Crack, Let's Do It Together
        • Duel
        • Domestic Constellation
        • America the Beautiful
        • Death of a Valkyrie
        • Old Woman Who Grieves War
        • I Read My Death in the Winter Stars
        • Femenina Sube: My Aquarian Age
        • The Straight Mind at Work at the Heart of Queer Theory
        • Journal: In the Bois de Vincennes
        • Landlady Emily Carr
        • Scenario For a New Agenda
        • I Could Do That
      • Issue 15: "Animal Instincts" >
        • Women. Horse. Mountain.
        • My Pre-Feminist Animal Instincts
        • Our Animal Selves
        • Presage
        • Animal Self
        • Comings and Goings
        • And the Hawk Flies
        • Birds of a Feather
        • Proper Adornment
        • Reverie
        • Algonquin Anthology
        • Sea Stars
        • Immortal
        • Spirit Horse
        • First Cousins: A Suite of Poems
        • Bird of Prey
        • Crows
        • Harpy
        • Snake I Come
        • Approaching the Gate
        • Horses in Winter
        • "Domestic Terrorist"
        • Homeless
        • Displacement
        • The Mornings After
        • Gust of Win
        • Squirrel Dick
        • Cats
        • Frankie
        • Worms
        • Animal Cracker
        • I Don't Believe in Marriage
        • Drawing on the Dream
        • The Cow with a Human Face
        • Orangutans at the Jardin des Plantes
        • Abattoir
        • In for Life
        • I Am Shark
        • Giving Voice to Bear
        • Threshold Crossing
        • The Mark of the Bear
        • Discernment Is All
        • Bears at Midnight
        • The Musky Scent of Bear
        • Baggage
        • The End of Our Friendship
        • Four Mile River Road: 1 Mile
        • The White Dog
        • White Dog/Blue Pearls
        • Baby Dream #15
        • Baby Dream #39
        • Fish Songs
        • Today I Fished
        • The Surgeon's Territory
        • Boudoir Portrait
        • The First Six Months of Survival
        • P for Patience
        • French Pout
        • My Next Girlfriend
        • Winter Solstice
      • Issue 14: "Preoccupation" >
        • Wheatpastes
        • An Editorial: "It's not time to worry yet."
        • Courage
        • Dispirited
        • Voices
        • Falling
        • Sunset #2
        • Cut You Out
        • Brooding
        • Planetary
        • Sleeping. Dreaming.
        • Drama with the Neighbor
        • Woman to Woman
        • The Conspiracy of Chores
        • Murder
        • White Sunset Through a Mesquite Tree
        • Patricia Cornflake's Lesbian Lifestyle
        • Doldrums, Horse Latitudes, and Tropics
        • A Woman Poet's Critique of Words Too Commonly Spoken
        • Memory's Witness
        • Finding Edges
        • Oh, That Bed! That Bed!
        • Mother, Daughter
        • Here We Are
        • Crazy Jane Addams Occupies Hull's House
        • Virtue
        • The Canary
        • White Sunset #3
        • Flow
        • Citrus
        • The Devil Finds Work for Idle Hands
        • Occupy Wall Street Poster
        • The Tent
        • Occupy Me!
        • (post)Occupation
        • The Poison Our Grandmothers and Mothers Drank
        • Hellish Clout
        • Tangle
        • The Bathing Scene from Marguerite Duras's "The Lover"
        • As I Lie
        • The Therapist
      • Issue 13: "Death" >
        • A Feminist Editorial on Death
        • Plucked
        • Chromosomal Geography
        • The Clinic
        • Offal
        • I Have Come to Show You Death
        • The Making of a Peaceful Death
        • Sayonara
        • Sitting in the Lap of God
        • Cycle
        • My Assailant
        • New Jersey Spring
        • Something Missing
        • Triptych: Art Essay on Death
        • The Heroes of Ecbatana
        • Jane is Dead
        • The Miscarriage
        • A Spiritual Death? The One-Eyed Doe...
        • Black Bears
        • Circus
        • The Road to Nowhere
        • American Jisei
        • Nothing to Lose
        • For Linda
        • For Ryan
        • Mindfall
        • Rest in Peace
        • Love Is Stronger Than Death
        • Twins and M/Others: A Survival Story
        • Due Diligence (A.K.A. Cracking Open Her Case)
        • Empirical Evidence
        • Dissociation
        • 27.2727273 Readers
        • The Nomad
        • Manifesto
        • Baby Island
        • Chinatown, Death, and Women
        • Surrounded by Death
        • Where Sanity Returned
        • Whitney
        • In the Shadow of Mumtaz
        • Of Woods
        • The Egg Broke
        • Playing with Dolls
        • Threadbare
        • Because We Must Lose You
        • Clock Time
        • Gynosis One: Samhain
        • The Last Trimester
        • Crossing
        • Tiny Eve
      • Issue 12: "Southwestern Voices" >
        • Issue 12 Editorial: "Southwestern Voices"
        • Trojan Horses in the Desert
        • You Can See the Silence
        • Fleeing Oklahoma
        • North Rim, Grand Canyon, AZ
        • Mobius Arch, Alabama Hills, CA
        • Vasquez Rocks Natural Area, CA
        • Our Lady
        • Mothers of Beauty
        • Talking Incest
        • Desire
        • Tales from the Health Club
        • Three Years Old Watching the Open Sky
        • The Missing Girls
        • It Has Become Our Will: Onward with Adrienne Rich (1929-2012)
        • A Conversation with bell hooks
        • Gertrude Stein, Hitler, and Vichy-France
        • Tinker Tailor Soldier Stein
        • Organic Evolution
        • Eclipse of Hope
        • I Lied
        • First Apartment
        • Translations of Poems by Shez
        • In Memoriam: Christa Wolf
      • Issue 11: "Are Lesbians Going Extinct," #2 >
        • Editorial_11
        • Invisible Outline
        • We Live as Two Lesbians
        • PrognostiKate
        • Dinosaurs & Haircuts: A Performance Monologue
        • To Be Real
        • Matrices
        • Coming Into Word
        • Prince of Paris
        • Ending Patriarchy
        • The Revolutionary Is the One who Begins Again
        • Always a Lesbian
        • Anti- Rape
        • Walking the Moon
        • Entanglement
        • Women Alone
        • No One Lives Her Life
        • Coming Out of the Straightjacket
        • Oscar of Between
        • Michele Causse
        • Jill Johnston
      • Issue 10: "Are Lesbians Going Extinct?" #1 >
        • Editorials
        • Before and after Sappho: Logos
        • On Living with a Poem for 20 Years: Judy Grahn's "A Woman Is Talking to Death"
        • And Will Rise? Notes on Lesbian ExtinctionNew Page
        • My Mid-term Exam in Lesbian Theory
        • Letter for Cynthia Rich
        • Dispatches from an Australian Radicalesbianfeminist
        • No Longer Burning
        • Reinvention and the Everyday
        • The Personal is Political
        • Notes on Reinvention and Extinction
        • Dyke on a Haybale: A Lesbian Teen in Kansas Speaks Out
        • Gay Trans and the Queering in Between
        • Lesbian Lament
        • The Inconvenient Truth about Teena Brandon
        • Who Says We're Extinct?
        • She Who
        • Lesbians Going All The Way
        • Trivia Saves Lives
        • Notes on Contributors
      • Issue 9: Thinking of Goddesses >
        • Vulture Medicine Augury
        • When hens were flying and god was not yet born
        • Canoeing our Way back to the Divine Feminine in Taino Spirituality
        • Testify
        • Young Pagan Goddess
        • Goddess is Metaformmic
        • For Want of a Goddess
        • Amaterasu- The Great Eastern Sun Goddess of Peace
        • What is Goddess? Toward an ontology of women giving birth. . .
        • Inanna Comes to Me in a Dream
        • First Blood Well The History of Bleeding
        • The Song of Lilith
        • Freedom Speaks Through Us
        • Dulce's Hands
        • Notes on contributors (9)
      • Issue 7/8: Unabashed Knowing >
        • Bad Manners All That Jazz
        • Hypatia
        • Amerika in 5 Parts
        • Screens: The War at Home
        • Invisible Nature
        • Woman-Woman Bonds in Prehistory
        • I Saw a Woman Dance
        • The Edible Parts
        • The Happy Hooker Revisisted
        • Re-membering an Interrupted Conversation:the Mother/Virgin Split
        • Notes on contributors (7/8)
      • Issue 6: The Art of the Possible >
        • The Aerial Lesbian Body: The Politics of Physical Expression
        • Wanting a Gun
        • Red Poppies Among the Ruings
        • Returning Home with Mago, the Great Goddess from East Asia
        • Noah's Wife
        • Reclaiming the Spooky: Matilda Joslyn Gage and Mary Daly as Radical Pioneers of the Esoteric
        • Grand Right and Left
        • Notes on Contributors (6)
      • Issue 5: The Resurrection Issue (2/2007) >
        • Waiting for Sappho
        • A Song of Captain Joan
        • Blue Mojo
        • Why Do Something If it Can be Done
        • In Memoriam: Monique Wittig
        • The Loudest Self
        • Clear and Fierce
        • (B) Orderlands' Lullaby
        • Borderlands
        • akaDARKNESS: on Kathy Acker
        • Remembering Barbara Macdonald
        • The Making of Power
        • Octavia Butler: A note on Xenogenesis as a love story
        • The Essential Angel: Tillie Olsen
        • Carol's Hands
        • Notes on Contributors (5)
      • Issue 4: The Wonderful & The Terrible (9/2006) >
        • Cunctipotence
        • Global Lovers
        • Our Lot
        • Doe a Deer
        • Degendering Sex: Undoing Erotic Alienation
        • Seven Stages of Lesbian Desire (What's Truth Got to Do With It?)
        • That Easter
        • Amazon Grace: Read it Aloud
        • Athene, 2002-2005
        • Notes on Contributors (4)
      • Issue 3: Love & Lust (2/2006) >
        • Conversation with Michele Causse
        • Chloto 1978
        • The Woman with the Secret Name
        • She is Still Burning
        • In the Beginning
        • Sanctuary
        • When Sex is Not the Metaphor for Intimacy
        • Arielle
        • Quotidian Love
        • Leverett
        • After Sappho's Fragments Tips for Natural Disasters Said Before
        • A Lesbian is a Memoir
        • Notes on Contributors (3)
      • Issue 2: Memory (12/2005) >
        • The Lost Days of Columbus
        • Agenesias of the Orld World
        • The Power of the Earth Shake/Rousing
        • Return to Earth
        • Forces of Nature
        • The Beauty Shop
        • The Other Shore
        • Notes on Contributors (2)
      • Issue 1: The Body (10/2004) >
        • Lovesick
        • Guerilla Girl Ponders the Situation
        • The Secret Pornographies of Republicans. What's left? Preferably Knot
        • Communing with Bears
        • TRIVIA LIVES: Division Street
        • After Reading: Les Gueilleres
        • Notes on Contributors (1)
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