Leigh

for Jean n e d'Arc~ burn i n g

in the end
the fire is all that we will see.
already its glow shames my fear of death : '
I close my heated eyes,
smote against
Her indigo sky.

(listen
I have found another of us)
our life the struggle torn
and melted, wounds suspended

she too has trained to burn in silence

who moved in dry and aching quiet
who loves with deadly grace.

At every rape
at every stake
incessantly whispered into
incessantly scraped across
each of our body's sacred openings
moment -by moment for all the days of our lives
We hurl molten suns
and slide and tear to kiss
containing movement
-and slowly finish screaming:
We rip ourselves
into each other's blood,
a union of liquid and blazes
burnished with aloneness

there are no echoes anymore in what is named love

I speak her name clearly into your eyes

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ashes melting: out

of the flames, unraped eyes

there was never
a time when
we did not know
the stakes
are high

our silence whole

you cannot hear a scream

we also wound by naming

for which we have no language we

also wound by naming tear
open to
heal

tigre mariposa*
we do not fear
your winged
poison your petalled
poise of
death
for some

*UteraUY3 "tiger butterfly"

in Spanish; the most deadly type
of Venezualan snake 3 whose bite
is alleged to kill in thirty seconds.
"Mariposa}' it may be noted3 is
vernacular for Lesbian.

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now poised to perceive
with my arched uterus.

a great arc
stretches from your eyes
through my spine
across which the faintest
rustle of thought
rocks my cervix my center with
tremors which are not
different from the nuzzle
and bulge of the moon

Artemis

slipper perfect silence travels between us

who knows how long I waited to feel
to see to hear
as a panther walking
picks her way
across a shelf of thin crystal glasses:

your hands lurk with that quality

soft searing pulses
poised

Susan Leigh star is a name I chose for myself--taking the first two
which are my birth-names and the last from a special Tarot reading
in which the Star came up as the card of self/highest ideals.
My writing first of all is divided up sharply--a reflection of
"them," not us--between poetry and social science theory. It's
easiest for me to conceptualize the difference in te~s of right
brain-left brain activity: writing my thesis in psychology, for
example, meant days of linear, slow connections-.1'logica7!'by the
male definition of the word. Poems come in an instant, for the
most part; they "brew" for weeks or years in some section of my
right brain and then burst forth in a very nonlinear fashion. But
there is some sharing on each side (the creative flash in theory
writing or the slow reworking of lines of poetry to make them
"talk" right), which gives me a hope of integration someday. I
cherish both modes for myself and would like to see them appear
together in my work and in my world.
I live in Somerville with March, who is often the subject,
sometimes the object, and always a participant in my writing. We
are radicallesbianwitchspiritualsexualpoliticalpersonalfeminis ts,
none of which lab~.ls can beat my favorite characterization of my-
self as a true deviant. (True deviants do not deviate from any
nO!'ms--and, therefore, another name for us is "no~al.")
-Susan Leigh Star
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